The evolution of federal welfare policies between the 1930s and the 1970s, and the roots of today’s anti-immigrant politics

Between 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 immigrants from almost all nonemergency services, but in the 1970s with the new federal constraints.

Fox explores the consequences of this restrictive turn in federal welfare policy for undocumented immigrants, their US-citizen family members, and anyone suspected of being in the country without authorization—especially Mexicans and Mexican Americans. She also considers the effects on state and local communities, which were no longer reimbursed for the costs of care they provided to unauthorized immigrants. Over time, federal restrictions increased intergovernmental tensions, contributed to popular nativism, and helped propel the passage of anti-immigrant state and federal initiatives two decades later. With Unauthorized Welfare, Fox sheds new light on the origins of anti-immigrant policies and politics.