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S N A P M A N U A L
57 because he/she suffers from some other severe, permanent physical or mental disease or non-disease related disability. The elderly and disabled individual (or his/her authorized representative) will be responsible for obtaining the cooperation of the individuals with whom he/she resides in providing the necessary income information about the others to the Agency for purposes of this provision. (6) Non-citizen eligibility The Agency must verify the eligible immigration status of applicant non-citizens. Households are required to submit USCIS documentation for each non-citizen applying for SNAP benefits as a condition of eligibility. The Agency is then required to verify the validity of these documents through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. NOTE: SAVE electronically verifies immigration status using a process that can take up to the three steps: Initial verification, Additional Verification and Third Step Verification. For more details, please refer to the SAVE User Reference Guide which can be found at https://save.uscis.gov/web/media/resourcesContents/SAVEProgramGuide.pdf. If a non-citizen does not wish the Agency to contact USCIS to verify his or her immigration status, the Agency must give the household the option of withdrawing its application or participating without that member. For acceptable sources of verification that may be used along with SAVE, see SNAP Tool Kit 2: Acceptable Verification of U.S. Citizenship and Non-Citizen Eligibility. For a description of citizens and noncitizens who may be eligible to participate in SNAP, see Section 7.3 Citizenship and Non-citizen Status. The SSA Quarters of Coverage History System (QCHS) is available for purposes of verifying whether a lawful permanent resident has earned or can receive credit for a total of 40 qualifying quarters. However, the QCHS may not show all qualifying quarters. For instance, SSA records do not show current year earnings and in some cases the last year's earnings, depending on the time of request. Also, in some cases, an applicant may have work from uncovered employment that is not documented by SSA but is countable toward the 40 quarters test. In both these cases, the individual, rather than SSA, would need to provide the evidence needed to verify the quarters. The Agency must accept participation in another program as acceptable verification if verification of citizenship or non-citizen national status was obtained for that program. A non-citizen is ineligible until acceptable documentation is provided unless: • The Agency has submitted a copy of a document provided by the household to USCIS for verification. Pending such verification, the Agency cannot delay, deny, reduce or terminate the individual's eligibility for benefits on the basis of the individual's immigration status; or