The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act denied legal noncitizens who arrived in the United States after August 1996 access to means‐tested federal benefits for the first 5 years. However, using state funds, a number of states restored some of the benefits. I use this state‐level policy variation to study whether newly arrived immigrants make location decisions on the basis of benefit eligibility and generosity. I find that safety‐net programs have little effect on the location choices of newly arrived low‐skilled unmarried immigrant women.