Illegal immigration has been a complicated issue for the United States for the last century and a half. With the days of Ellis Island steamboats and open-door policies behind us, we are struggling to define the rights of those people who are coming to our country illegally. A multitude of issues arise from this situation: should illegal immigrants be able to work? Should they receive health care? Should they be educated in the public school system? Should they receive welfare benefits such as food stamps and unemployment checks? These, and many more questions are perplexing our government and its constituents. I have chosen to study two of these issues: health care and education. I will begin by discussing the Pleyer v. Doe case, California’s Proposition 187, and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 as examples of case studies in this field.
Background
The history of immigration restriction began in 1849 when the Supreme Court ruled that immigration was “foreign commerce” and could be regulated by Congress {Daniels, 12}. The first major ruling on the restriction of public education to illegal immigrants didn’t come until well over a century later. The Pleyer v. Doe case, which went before the Supreme Court in 1982, began from a revision to a 1975 Texas education law that let the state withhold funds from local school districts for educating children who were illegal residents in the United States. The main question was whether this law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.1 There was also the question of whether education was a universal right, which couldn’t be denied. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that states couldn’t deny the right to pu ...