A 1996 law prevented migrants from getting welfare — it’s been ignored for 30 years

1996 was the “Year of Welfare Reform,” including for migrants.

The historic Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was designed to “strengthen the principle that immigrants come to America to work, not to collect welfare benefits.” PRWORA cut off illegal aliens from most federal public benefits.

It instituted a five-year ineligibility period for lawful permanent residents (LPRs) for most federal welfare programs, “to send a clear signal that immigrants are expected to … not become dependent on public welfare benefits.”

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, enacted later in 1996, required that U.S. citizens and LPRs sponsoring relatives for green cards sign legally binding affidavits of support, obligating them to reimburse taxpayers for welfare benefits received by sponsored aliens.

But Bill Clinton got into a world of hurt with the Democrat base for signing PRWORA into law. Per the Washington Post, “labor unions, religious groups and organizations representing women, minorities and immigrants … expressed outrage.” Probably most in President Clinton’s mind was the president of the National Organization for Women’s threat of retribution: “while some of us may hold our noses and vote for President Clinton, many of us will refuse to lift a finger or contribute a penny toward his reelection.” 

Clinton clearly had to make amends. He promised to “correct” parts of the bill, including those “deny[ng] Federal assistance to legal immigrants.”

But the White House needed a legal angle to do so without help from the Republican Congress. It found one. PRWORA didn’t define exactly what “means-tested public benefit” meant – so the administration created its own definition, one that would reduce the ineligibility period and sponsors’ financial obligation to the fewest possible welfare programs.

The Clinton administration decided, with the help of then White House staffer and now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, that the ineligibility period and the affidavit of support’s financial obligation would only apply to “mandatory” federal welfare programs, like Medicaid and Social Security.

Immigration advocates were placated. There were a host of other discretionary welfare spending programs they could still use for migrants.

Rep. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims (who I worked for at the time as a subcommittee counsel) sent a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno stating his “dismay and disappoint[ment]” over the agreement, “utterly lacking in merit and mak[ing] a travesty of statutory interpretation.”

He could “only conclude” that the administration’s “analysis was constructed to fit a predetermined result.” Finally, “it prevents from being fulfilled the promise to the American taxpayer.”

Yet the “agreement” still went into effect, remains federal government policy to this day, almost three decades later.

The result? Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler of the Center for Immigration Studies have found that households headed by aliens (mostly LPRs) still receive welfare benefits at a far higher rate than do households headed by the native-born.

The Year of Welfare Reform’s promise to American taxpayers needs to be fulfilled. I would urge President Trump to consider undoing the Clinton administration’s sabotage of welfare reform, which was an “interpretation” not a law.

Oh, and if Trump does and the dispute reaches the Supreme Court, Justice Kagan will need to sit that one out.

George Fishman is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of a new report on the use of welfare by immigrants.