Erica Neely Talks SNAP, Immigration, and Her New Book “Fighting for Sophia” | Nevada News & Views Thursday

Alan Stock 00:00
And a good morning. Great to have you with us on this big Thursday morning, 30th day of October, and joining us right now in the Vegas KXNT liveline on this Nevada News and Views Thursday is writer for the Nevada News and Views and founder of the Hispanic Latin Alliance, Erica Neely, who happens to also be a candidate for the ninth Assembly District, my district, by the way of disclosure. So I’m thrilled that she’s running Erica. How you doing?

Erica Neely 00:27
Good morning Alan, I’m doing great. Thank you for having me today.

Alan Stock 00:30
Oh, absolutely the case. You wrote a great piece in Nevada News and Views about the truth about SNAP. And you know, a lot of people don’t really understand about this. Just give us a quick idea of what this is really all about, and who are the recipients of the of this food stamp program?

Erica Neely 00:56
Well, the numbers are scary. Let me just start that 42 million people – people, not citizens – people are on the stamp program. That includes 59% of illegal immigrants. This program for Feeding America, let me just tell you the numbers, 45% of Afghanistan immigrants, 42% of Somali immigrants, 34% of Iraq are enrolled, 23 of Haitians. So 59% of illegal aliens are collecting food stamps. I remember when they were – I remember when they told us that diversity was our strength, and immigrants were supposed to help our economy, and we’re talking about $1.2 trillion in food stamps.

Alan Stock 01:44
That is, that is amazing. When my grandfather came to this country at the turn of last century, he had to have three things. One was a job. He had to have a sponsor. In case the case, he lost the job because there was no government, you know, kind of net. And he had to test negative for consumption, which we now know is tuberculosis, and he passed all those he had a job and a sponsor, and he passed the health test. But today you can – and the point of coming here was, he was a – he was a tailor, but he had a job and he was contributing to the economy. Today people can come here and not just come here as immigrants, but as illegal immigrants. People who have come across the border, illegally snuck into this country, don’t have a job, don’t have any way of contributing to our economy or being positive in any way, and we just put them on food stamps and on the dole and say, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of you just because you got here, even though it was illegal.” This is, this is real insanity. It’s an insult also to the hard working Americans.

Erica Neely 02:50
I was thinking about the same word. It is an insult to the American people. Coming in, the American dream is to work hard and to assimilate into the country and to help our economy and strengthen the family unit. This is the opposite. One must wonder, why would the last administration allow so many illegals to enter the country and then abused our system?

Alan Stock 03:15
You know, and the irony is Erica, is that they not only allowed them in, but – I know you remember this too – they actually flew them in. I mean, ones that didn’t want to just walk across the border. They flew them in from other countries, illegals coming from their countries, who just wanted to come here, no passports, nothing like that at all. Just flew them into cities like Chicago and New York and elsewhere. And of course, the mayors and governors of those states and mayors of those cities were on board because this is all part of making America, I mean, mushy. We’re not an American society. We’re trying to be all things to all people. And it hasn’t worked out. It’s been a disaster.

Erica Neely 04:05
Well this new scandal just adds to the list. Remember, we had the Obama -, the section eight, the WIC, the Medicaid, financial aid, public schools, health care, driver’s license, and how we could just add SNAP into the list of everything that is being abused and taken advantage of the American people.

Alan Stock 04:27
Boy, that is, that is absolutely so true. And as you wrote in your piece, and it’s true, the American dream was built on hard work and on self reliance, not dependency of an over inflated welfare system that rewarded law breaking, which again, my grand- didn’t exist when my grandfather got here. And now we have said, come on over and we’ll we’ll take care of you, even though you’re really- and we’ll even fly you in here. Now this administration is obviously
pushing back and all of that, and people are getting ticked off around the country because they are pushing back, but they’re only trying to clean up what the prior administration dirtied and soiled in this country.

Erica Neely 05:13
That’s right, I would agree. I think there is a lot of cleaning up, and it is sad that this is happening, but at the same time, we can’t clean but we we don’t see, or we don’t know, and this shutdown has exposed the 42 million people on on food stamps, which 59% are from illegal aliens.

Alan Stock 05:34
You know, the one thing I do want to say is that there was this back and forth between Governor Joe Lombardo and Susie Lee. She wanted Governor Joe Lombardo, excuse me, to put more money into a band aid on the SNAP type program. And he said he needs the legislature to go ahead and do that. But what ticks me off is that instead of Susie Lee asking for a band aid, she and Jackie Rosen, our senator, who’s been silent on this – they should be Susie Lee and the
other congressional representatives, Dina Titus and Steven Horsford – should be encouraging their party senators to open the country back up again and then those SNAP and all the other programs would would be able to flow. But they’re not saying anything. And Jackie Rosen has been silent about this. Catherine Cortez Masto voted to open it up at one point, but Jackie Rosen has been as quiet as a church mouse.

Erica Neely 06:34
That’s right. So now we could say that she’s voted 15 times to not reopen the government. And also what – is doing, this is a federal program. For her to point the finger at Governor Lombardo for the state, it’s misleading the American people.

Alan Stock 06:49
It is really misleading the American people. I’ve got to take a break. I want to come on back and talk about a book, your book, I read it, a great book. It’s called “Fighting for Sophia”. Very, very moving book about adoption, and I want you to talk to us about “Fighting for Sophia”. When we come on back. We’ve got Erica Neely joining us. She’s founder of the Hispanic Latin Alliance, writer for Nevada News and Views on this Nevada News and Views Thursday, also a candidate
for the ninth assembly district; would make a great assembly person, by the way, and we’re going to continue in just a moment right here on Vegas at eight. Manny, good morning. Great to have you with us on this Thursday morning, and we are really happy to have with us Erica Neely on this Nevada News and Views Thursday. She happens to be a writer with Nevada News and Views as well as a candidate for the ninth assembly district and an author of a book called
“Fighting for Sophia”, which I had the pleasure to read before it was put out. And it is really a- It’s not only a well written book, it is really an emotional book, if you read it, about adoption, and you did a great job, Erica, and tell us a little bit about what motivated you to write “Fighting for Sophia”.

Erica Neely 08:08
The story is actually my true journey in the foster care program. I started this journey in 2017 not knowing- well, actually, you know what? I was very naive about what goes on in foster care. My whole intent was to foster to adopt, and my husband and I decided to take the route, we saw- we heard a commercial on the radio “What’s one more?” We already had four kids in our home, four girls, four girls, and we wanted to adopt from the bottom of our heart, that’s what
we’ve always wanted, but the opportunity came. Since we kept having girls and girls, we decided, well, let’s adopt a little boy. So we enter the foster care program, learning that 2000 kids a month here in Clark County go into the system, and they could be returning cases, new cases. When I left the program after five years, it increased to 3000. This story is about how the courts, there are certain cases where parents should, the children do need help, but then there’s other cases where parents are fighting to get back their children, and once the
government takes parental rights, the children become government property of the state. And I was reminded of that when I went to court fighting for custody for Sophia, the judge looked at me straight in the eye and said, “Let me remind you, Miss Neely, Sophia is property of the state.”

Alan Stock 09:40
Those words?

Erica Neely 09:42
Yes.

Alan Stock 09:43
Oh, God, a person being a property. I thought we got rid of slavery with the 14th Amendment. Maybe I’m wrong, okay, but I thought we did.

Erica Neely 09:52
It was shocking. I talked about it in the book how, how they just look at children as cases coming in and out. And with the overload of 2, 3000 cases a month, it’s taken away the value of life, in my opinion. And this is just all my opinion. Everybody has a different experience, but this is my experience over the five years of fostering to adopt.

Alan Stock 10:16
One thing I want to say about people who foster kids. Unlike adoption, which adoptions are great and you’d wind up adopting her, but fostering a child, I think, is an extra special, takes an extra special type of person, because you bring a child into your home knowing that you’ve got to try to give as much care and love and do what you can to help enhance the child’s experience, help them grow. And of course, you become attached to that child, knowing the whole time that that child is going to be leaving you, and that’s, that to me, would be a very, very, very tough thing to do, and it takes a very special, special type person. You and your husband certainly are two of those people, and I salute you for that.

Erica Neely 11:15
Thank you. There is, I think I’m kind of shy right now, because thank you so much for the compliment. You do have to have a special heart of you know, truly believing that keeping the family unit, you want these moms and dads to get better and heal and take the child back home. Absolutely, as a foster parent, you never want to go in in there with the mindset, not that anybody does, but you’re not in- you’re not going in there to separate families. You’re going in there to build families.

Alan Stock 11:46
Right, to help people out who need help raising their kids. And unfortunately, there are times when the kids come from homes that are either abusive or addictive, and you’re trying to help the child get on their feet and do well even as babies, you know, grow them a bit knowing that they may wind up going back to a situation where the the parents could be abusive or, you know, still addicted to drugs or alcohol or something like that. And again, it’s, it’s a tough thing. Not, not all of us in the world are geared toward being able to adopt and/or foster, and you and your husband have done that, and you know, again, you’re two very, very special people for doing that. And I salute you. The book is called “Fighting for Sophia”. Where can people find it?

Erica Neely 12:37
Currently, we’re giving out the book for free with a donation to the campaign, since I’m running for assembly district nine, any donations as little as $5 and then we’ll mail you a signed copy. So if you go to NeelyForNevada, Neely, N, E, E, L, Y, F, O, R, Nevada.com

Alan Stock 13:02
Okay, I encourage you to do that. She would be great in the assembly. And plus, you’re going to get the opportunity to read a really emotionally moving but very uplifting book as well, “Fighting for Sophia”. Erica Neely, running for the ninth assembly district. I encourage you to check her out. Erica, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate it the best to you and you and I will talk again very soon.

Erica Neely 13:27
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.