President-elect Barack Obama is already talking about instituting a Works Progress Administration (WPA)-like program to “put people back to work”. It will supposedly revitalize our transportation infrastructure, modernize our failing public schools, and bring us closer to energy independence by building windfarms and solar panels. It’s being called the New New Deal by many.

But Mr. Obama should remember a small point about the original WPA: As National Review reminds us in its latest edition, 1937 saw Congress stipulating that alien residents — legal or otherwise — were barred from the programs. Some more info:

“In 1937 Congress, following a trend already established by the states, declared that all programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) would be closed to aliens. The “citizens-only” policy of the WPA extended even to companies that fulfilled government contracts; corporations such as General Motors fired those whom they perceived as foreigners to keep from losing lucrative government business.”[LATINO AMERICANS, IMPACT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION ON, Macmillan Reference USA, 2004]

Will Barack Obama’s new WPA follow in the original’s footsteps by restricting the benefit programs to U.S. citizens only? Or will we end up with illegal aliens on the rolls, just as we originally saw in ’36:

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.

Today we have 12-20 million “aliens without papers” in the country. An interesting predicament.