The most important factor in determining people's economic self-sufficiency is their ability to get access to quality higher education. This is the most short-sighted thing we could do. People who are in school are the very people and families that are on the road to economic self-sufficiency. These are the people who, because of their education, can move into well-paying jobs and stay off the welfare rolls. Currently, states can only count 12 months of vocational education as a work activity.
Citizenship is the American ideal.
There may be an army of actualities opposed to that ideal, but there is no ideal opposed to that ideal.