The Impact of Anti-Immigrant Policy on Publicly Subsidized Reproductive Health Care

Throughout its history, the United States has gone through cycles of anti-immigrant fervor. Such times are marked by claims that immigrants—because of excessive numbers, lack of skills and resources, or cultural isolation and differences—are a danger to the country and a drain on its resources. One parti-cularly persistent complaint is that immigrants, regardless of their legal status, take advantage of the nation’s safety-net system of government assistance.

The mid-1990s was a crest of one such cycle. During that time, California voters approved Proposition 187, which prohibited illegal immigrants from receiving virtually all public benefits, including public health coverage and primary and secondary education. For its part, Congress attributed almost half of the expected savings from its so-called welfare reform legislation in 1996 to those to be achieved by establishing years-long waiting periods for legal noncitizens to join such government programs as welfare, food stamps and Medicaid—or excluding them entirely unless and until they gain citizenship.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100107.html

Posted by: [Sean Ahmed]