The first social welfare programs, such as Social Security, made no distinctions at all between citizens and resident aliens. Legal aliens were allowed to participate in that program, and other programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Aid to Dependant Children on an equal basis with U.S. citizens.

As immigrants began to arrive in this country during the 1980s and 1990s at levels unseen since the turn of the century, however, concern began to focus on how the new arrivals were straining the net of social welfare programs. In 1994, California passed Proposition 187, which eliminated all public assis-tance for illegal immigrants and banned the children of illegal immigrants from public schools in the state, requiring that such children be reported. It also required state facilities to refuse health care treatment for illegal immigrants. Passage of this law was considered a sign of the public’s increasing intolerance of the effects of immigration.