Unauthorized Welfare: The Rise and Consequences of Immigrant Status Restrictions (Princeton Studies in American Politics)

The evolution of federal welfare policies between the 1930s and the 1970s, and the roots of today’s anti-immigrant politicsBetween 1935 and 1972, US federal welfare policy did not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens.Noncitizens, including unauthorized immigrants, were eligible for Social Security and unemployment insurance as well as other mean-tested programs.But that changed in the 1970s, when the federal government first barred unauthorized immigrants from virtually all federal welfare programs and loosened confidentiality provisions that prohibited health and welfare officials from sharing information with immigration authorities.In Unauthorized Welfare, Cybelle Fox examines the emergence of federal immigrant status restrictions in American social welfare policy and describes its wide-ranging effects.She shows that, contrary to previous accounts, the roots of today’s anti-immigrant politics are found not in the 1990s, when California’s Proposition 187 banned undocumented i