Immigration Welfare Policy Term Paper

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Immigrant Welfare Policy Summary & Critique

Immigration into the United States has historically come in waves, with the current upward trend beginning in 1965 and gaining steam through the 1980s, to the point where nearly one million immigrants a year, on average, have been admitted to the United States throughout the 1990s and the current decade. Many of these newer immigrant gained legal status as U.S. citizens through back or side doors, such as entering the country with a temporary visa and then applying for citizenship, or even seeking citizenship after living as an illegal immigrant for some years. Such side-door entry has had a significant impact not only on the number of immigrants made citizens each year, but also on the ability of these immigrants to adequately provide for themselves and their families without depending on federal assistance.

This has inextricably tied the issue of immigration to that of welfare, which underwent massive restrictive reforms in the 1990s even as immigrant levels were rising. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) made all non-U.S. citizens (including legal resident aliens) ineligible for federal assistance. This led to a drastic decrease in government spending (though there were other modifications/restriction created by the PRWORA, nearly half of the savings created by the act came in reductions to or exclusions of immigrant benefits). It also led to a sudden rise in applications for citizenship from legal immigrants and resident aliens who had previously been eligible for many federal assistance programs. Other effects of the PRWORA have been less immediate, making cost/benefit analysis difficult.

The issue is complicated by the fact that any child born in the United States, regardless of their parents' immigration status, is a full citizen of the United States.

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In many instances, this means that federal, state, and local dollars are flowing to families that do not pay taxes at all (due to unauthorized and therefore unreported employment). At the same time, it is not clear the reducing benefits to immigrants is healthy for the United States social or economic bottom line. Medicaid is one example of this; though the cost of immigrant children using Medicaid is high, the reductions that are available by reducing allowances are fairly negligible. In addition, providing children (immigrant or not) adequate access to healthcare and education has been empirically shown to lead to increased productivity and success later in life, creating a boon for the U.S. economy. The current debate centers around the costs and benefits of both limiting immigration and the availability of federal assistance to immigrants, or alternatively expanding immigration and restoring welfare access as a means to encourage economic growth.

Critique

One of the major problems in dealing with such issues is perspective. The articles here deal with the problem purely as one of economics, and the fact is the economic impact of immigration is not hugely significant given the size of the U.S. population and economy. Furthermore, the full economic effects of immigration are too complex and far reaching to ever be determined with any certainty. What is clear is that short-term costs would rise dramatically if more federal assistance programs were made available to immigrants, both legal and otherwise, while the long-term effects remain very much a matter of debate. Decreasing aid can actually lead to an increase in cost in many areas, especially healthcare, in addition to raising humanitarian issues.

Most of the authors admit the somewhat nebulous areas of their arguments….....

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