This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 6, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been 20 years since welfare reform tightened rules on immigrants receiving benefits.

The outcome has been a persistent increase in labor force

participation and a decline in poverty among those affected immigrant groups.

David Beer, a policy analyst at the Kito Institute, discusses the data.

What was the status before welfare reform in 1996 of immigrants being on welfare roles to begin with.

So legal permanent residents who were treated the same as United States citizens for welfare benefits purposes.

So that's really other, you know, temporary visa holders, non-immigrants, guest workers were

prohibited from welfare, but any immigrant who's here permanently would have

been treated exactly the same as a U.S. citizen.

So you've looked at how immigrants have made use of welfare benefits since welfare reform in 96.

What changed with regard to their qualifications for welfare with the 96 reform?

The 1996 Act required immigrants to have been in the country

for five years before they'd be eligible for benefits

and it also required them to have a sponsor who would

take whatever charitable needs that they had off the government.

All right, so you looked at some of the data on immigrants welfare use, labor force

participation and all of that, what did you find?

Well their use of welfare declined rapidly after 1996 and what really

we're trying to take a look at is how they actually did employment wise, poverty wise, was this a negative thing or a positive

thing for the immigrant population?

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