Immigrant Children and Families on the 10th Anniversary of Welfare Reform
The 1996 federal welfare reform law had a significant impact on immigrants. It drastically scaled back immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. Whereas legal immigrants were generally eligible for public assistance on more or less the same terms as citizens before 1996, they are now barred from receiving federally financed cash assistance for the first five years that they are in the United States. With funding from the Foundation, Michael Fix and Demetrios Papademetriou will hold a conference that will bring key researchers and policy analysts to explore how the changes introduced by welfare reform have affected immigrant families and their children during a period of sustained high levels of immigration. The conference will tackle such issues as the ideology and politics behind the treatment of immigrants under the new welfare regime, trends in welfare benefits and usage among immigrants, and the protection of vulnerable immigrants during economic downturns. Fix and Papademetriou will edit a volume of the conference papers.