Public Assistance and Social Welfare

Aliens and the WPA
Although access to public assistance programs like Home Relief and the WPA were not initially circumscribed by immigration status, heated debates at several levels of the federal government throughout the 1930s show increasing opposition to providing "aliens" with work relief. Home Relief in New York State does not seem to have been distributed under guidelines that prevented aliens from procuring assistance. A 1936 study conducted by the Emergency Relief Bureau in New York City concluded that 81.5% of those on Home Relief were citizens, 5.7% of those on Home Relief were aliens with papers, and 12.8% of those on Home Relief were aliens without papers. These findings led the Emergency Relief Bureau to conclude that aliens as a class were not more dependent on relief than citizens.1

Indeed, federal relief programs conducted under the auspices of the early New Deal (the first 100 days), were equally open to providing relief to all regardless of immigration status. But by 1937, the federal government arrived at the point of excluding all aliens from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest of all relief programs. The historian Mary Anne Thatcher argues that this resulted from the intense anti-immigrant sentiment that took hold in the 1920s and was exacerbated during the Great Depression by fears that aliens were taking scarce jobs rightfully those of "true" American citizens. At the federal level, in the early stages of the Great Depression, no uniform policy was in effect either to protect or deny equality of opportunity to alien residents, but the drift of sentiment and practice toward denying them seems clear despite the judicious approach of the state department.2

During the advent of the New Deal, not only did efforts increase to restrict aliens, but pressures were also brought to bear to subdivide citizen applicants in order to give priorities to special interest groups, usually veterans and organized labor, in effect intensifying the isolation of the alien. While Public Works Administration (PWA) officials took steps to restrict the provision of work relief to citizens, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), another product of the first 100 days, was operating on a different basis. Recognizing the moral responsibility of the nation and its subdivisions toward aliens who had entered lawfully, in creating this agency, Congress specifically designated aliens eligible for relief. Determined to assure fair treatment of minority groups, FERA administrator Harry Hopkins issued explicit instructions that relief was to be given to all persons, and/or their dependents, "whose employment or other available resources are inadequate to provide the necessities of life, and that there shall be no discrimination based on race, religion, color, non-citizenship, political affiliation, or because of membership in any special or selected group."3

As is usually the case, however, federal policy was often translated differently at the level of local implementation. FERA funds were not distributed directly by federal officials, but channeled as matching funds and grants in aid to states and was handled by state and local relief agencies already in existence. Recipients had to be on local relief rolls and had to submit to a means test w/ investigation left to local caseworkers. Local discretion often led to complaints of discrimination. Some localities had reduced the relief allowances to foreign born of other than European roots on the grounds that a lower standard of living was customary to them. Other localities, while giving the regular relief allowances to aliens of non-European origin, sometimes tended to keep all aliens at the bottom of the lists, caring for the majority group first.4

Not more than 3% of the total persons receiving relief in Oct. 1934 were aliens, a proportion about 25% smaller than the ratio of aliens to the total population. A significant factor was "the widespread reluctance on the part of aliens to apply for relief because of the fear of deportation."5

For a while, the "first New Deal" package of policies brought some relief, but sustained recovery failed to arrive and some programs were declared unconstitutional. In the wake of this first New Deal, Roosevelt scored an even more dramatic series of triumphs that consolidated his position as the guardian of the people's welfare-some of which stand as the most important social legislation in American history. One of the products of this new series of legislation was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). When the WPA was created in 1935, FDR insisted on a policy of no discrimination. Initial office forms designed for the WPA provided no space for giving information regarding the race, religion, citizenship, and politics of the applicant. But this humanitarian approach was soon to be curtailed, for in Congress there was considerable sentiment against being generous to reliefers in general and to aliens in particular. As mentioned earlier, the Emergency Relief Bureau concluded that aliens as a class were not more dependent on relief than citizens. Nevertheless, anti-alien propaganda ran high that fall. The American Legion, for example, demanded that the federal government "employ only American citizens on relief projects and find aliens ineligible for loans from the Home Owners Loan Corporation." Public citizens also sent similar letters of protestation to their senators and congressmen.6

Despite the guidelines of FDR and other high-ranking federal officials, the US Congress acted in successive measures to exclude alien residents from the largest public works program in the country, the Works Progress Administration. Opposition to these restrictions, however, also carried some powerful arguments. Some federal officials, for example, objected on the grounds that, in the eyes of the world, America stood for equality of opportunity, and any effort to circumscribe eligibility for relief hurt the nation's international stature.7

As for aliens illegally in the US, Harry Hopkins affirmed to the House that such an applicant would not be put on the relief rolls despite the absence in law or executive orders of specific authorization for such as decision. This sentiment was codified in 1936 with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1936, which included a stipulation against "knowingly" employing aliens illegally in the United States. The WPA, however, was not required to conduct extensive investigations, and many aliens undoubtedly obtained WPA jobs despite their status.8

The Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1937 further restricted the eligibility of immigrants for WPA jobs. The WPA was henceforth not to employ any alien who was not at least a declarant and, moreover, a system of preferential employment was introduced:

1st preference given to veterans of the Spanish-American War and WWI
2nd preference to other citizens.
3rd to aliens who had obtained first papers prior to the enactment of the law
4th to aliens who obtained first papers after that date.9