If anything, it's the US government that's encouraged the free ride since that time.
Yup.
Actually the US encouraged illegals back then (you could get a SS card with ANY foreign ID); interesting fact is that the SS file was flagged even then, just the 'not able to work' status was ignored (I happend to stumble on some details).
Now you have leftist forces embracing this mess and supporting social services (that was unheard of back then).
Some days I wonder what happened to the US I became part of.