Now with a MacBook, you work in a comfy coffee shop to earn enough to stay at a regular motel for the night and get a regular meal.
Also, MacBook freelancing is a higher bar than handyman mechanical work. It requires literacy and training on some skill on the computer that puts you above the Mechanical Turk workforces in much cheaper countries.
Please elaborate.
26 states run their own programs as well which may or may not have different time requirements for accessing them.
Per the most recent census, a majority of non-citizen households utilize some public benefit (most often medicaid and food assistance) likely due to the difference in education (63% at 10 years living here).
If my grandparents had come here today, they would also certainly be making use of these programs. Since they came over roughly 20 years before the New Deal was passed, local community support was the best they had.
New immigrants have more safety nets but fewer overall opportunities, I think, in particular if they came without professional skills. I recall the story of my grandfather and his brother who- during the great depression- drove halfway across the country on a small motorbike with nothing but a box of tools, trading a bit of mechanical work for some food and a night in a barn's hay loft along the way. They eventually stopped and worked as mechanics until they could open their own shop. That is the sort of thing that just seems unthinkable nowadays.