Should recent immigrants have the right to welfare paid for by your tax dollar?

of the more contentious issues in the 1996 welfare reform debate was whether the federal government should provide welfare benefits to non-citizens who are legal residents of the United States. The sometimes bitter debate revealed a fundamental divide in how advocates, analysts, and policymakers think about welfare for non-citizens. On the one hand, those who support welfare benefits for non-citizens point out that at the time of the 1996 reforms, legal non-citizens enjoyed access to a wide range of welfare benefits. This access was based on the principle that non-citizens come to America to participate in the full range of American social, economic, and political life and that, with modest exceptions, they should be treated like other Americans. The children of non-citizens, the vast majority of whom are American citizens, are especially deserving of the safety net provided by welfare programs. Supporters believe that to deny non-citizens and their children welfare benefits is to leave them outside the protective sphere of social welfare guaranteed to the disabled and destitute by federal and state government policy. Moreover, like other Americans, non-citizens pay taxes, and unlike non-citizens in many other countries, can be drafted in time of war.

By contrast, those who oppose benefits for non-citizens argue that restricting their access to welfare has been a principle of American domestic policy since colonial times. The federal law, established in 1882 and strengthened in the early twentieth century, was that immigration officials should refuse entry to any non-citizen who appeared likely to become a “public charge” and should deport those who did, although actual deportations of public charges have been rare. Those supporting the 1996 reforms also point out that, both in statutory law and in the minds of American citizens as revealed in polls, welfare for non-citizens has always been suspect. The congressional prohibitions from the late nineteenth century have already been mentioned, but more recent restrictions are also notable. Specifically, in 1993 the Democrati-cally controlled Congress extended from three to five years the period that immigrants entering the country had to wait before they could qualify for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. Thus, the principle that non-citizens do not have the right to benefits on the same basis as citizens has long been established and maintained by the Congress. Finally, those in favor of benefit cuts for non-citizens have been strongly motivated to save taxpayer dollars and balance the budget