In passing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (PRWORA) that generally restricted immigrant access to public benefits, Congress explicitly exempted certain programs from PRWORA’s immigrant access restrictions in order to ensure that programs that protected life, safety and public health remained open to all individuals without regard to their immigration status. As a matter of federal law, all of the programs listed in this brochure are open to all persons, including undocumented immigrants, and access to these programs cannot be restricted by service providers or by state or local governments
