An undetermined but significant number of persons who had not previously been eligible for various public assistance programs in education. health care. and job training wou. now become eligible as a result of tis amnesty program. Many of those programs were administered either totally at the State level or through some form of FederalState partnership. I was Governor of the State of Florida during much of this debate in the 1980s and was chair of the National Governors Association Committee on Immigration and Refugees. I represented a State which was significantly affected by this 1986 legislation. Prior to 1986. one of the stumbling blocks for passage of legislation had been: How would the cost of financing this transition from illegal to legal status be borne? It was the original position of the States that since it was the Federal Governments immigration policy. or failure to enforce immigration policy that had resulted in this large number of illegal persons being in the United States. that the Federal Government should pay the full cost of transition. The States. however. eventually agreed to this sharing arrangement. They agreed to a 7year program under which the States and local governments would be partially reimbursed for their transition costs.
Keywords matched
Refugees Immigration immigration