Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

Another bill passed Congress in August 1996 and went to the president for his signature. This one, he complained to his advisers, was “a decent welfare bill wrapped in a sack of shit.” The law slashed the welfare rolls and unraveled the social safety net, but perhaps the most controversial aspect of it was how the bill funded job training programs to wean people from government support. Almost half of the total funding—some $23 billion—came from cutting aid to legal immigrants. For years, permanent residents and green-card holders had received federal relief. The bill would end that, making them ineligible for welfare, aid to families with dependent children, supplementary security income, food stamps, and Medicaid. Up until this moment, there was a clear fault line for immigrants in the realm of public policy: legal immigrants were considered upstanding and thus largely protected, while “illegal” immigrants were treated as reprehensible. The welfare reform bill drew a distinction between legal immigrants and citizens.