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IRCA to CIRA--from alphabet soup to nuts

To get a feel for how we got to the mess we're in with IRCA (1986) and its growing little sister CIRA (2007), read the panoramic view in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 367, 1966, a special issue titled, "The New Immigration." It's an interesting issue, with articles by people like Ted Kennedy and Frank Mott. We would be welcoming skilled, professional and technical workers we were told, and the charts and graphs showed a very small percentage of service and farm sector workers. President Johnson had assured us before signing the 1965 immigration bill into law in October 1965 that, "Nothing in the legislation relieves any immigrant of the necessity of satisfying all of the security requirements we now have, or the requirements designed to exclude persons likely to become public charges. No immigrants admitted under this bill could contribute to unemployment in the United State." (LBJ, January 13, 1965). Pipe dreams. A joke. No crystal ball, not even an understanding of human nature, just like now. With all the other social problems going on in the 1960s, the American people hardly noticed that "family reunification" clauses might mean one legal immigrant could be bringing in 20 relatives who then would bring in their relatives.

We (or rather the giants we elected to congress) needed to rework it all in 20 years and got the "Immigration Reform and Control Act" of 1986--the word "control" was added because almost all the immigration was non-white, non-skilled, many political refugees, with much of it illegal by the 1980s and with the growing problem of porous borders. Then the Immigration Act of 1990 was added to the pantheon. There is an interesting overview of the competing interest groups and issues like homosexuality, aids, social security, welfare, etc. at "The Politics of Immigration Reform in the United States, 1981-1990" by Daniel J. Tichenor in Polity Vol. 26, No. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 333-362.
Online here. Tichenor marvels that Congress got anything done at all--sound familiar? In other words, they gave us a bi-partisan mishmash, filled with complex and competing ideas over 20 years ago.

"With little support for internal enforcement, IRCA dealt with the illegal population residing in the country by granting legal status to nearly three million illegal aliens. The enforcement provisions of IRCA, which penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, never
established a reliable identification system of employee eligibility. As a result, an underground industry of fraudulent documents permitted illegal immigration to return to pre-reform levels. The Immigration Act of 1990 granted stays of deportation to family members of aliens legalized under IRCA. The 1990 law also established an increased "cap" on legal immigration that may be "pierced" for relatives of citizens. Several refugee groups received special protection as well."

Opinion polls indicated Americans wanted a decrease, not an increase, of immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s. Then as now (as proposed by Bush--the non-amnesty amnesty), the problem of illegal aliens was solved by making them legal--only in 1986 there were approximately 3 million illegals. No one knows how many we have today--12 million is used as the low end figure.

We have competing forces--the 1986 IRCA solved nothing and actually made things worse. Adding the word "comprehensive" in 2007 to an already unworkable plan won't improve it. And I'm guessing that if the internet, blogs, cable TV and talk radio had been around in the 80s, so that the American public understood how it was being screwed by big business, big agriculture, big labor, feel-good, liberal Christians and weak willed, clueless politicians, particularly Republicans, IRCA would have gone down in flames in 1986.

"The 1986 and 1990 laws were supported by a fragile coalition of liberals, who celebrate entitlements, and conservatives, who embrace the market. The pro-immigration tenor of these laws cohered not to a dominant public philosophy, but rather accommodated the programmatic ambitions and ideals of distinct political movements."

There are powerful interest groups in this country who want a continuous supply of poor people--not just to fill low skilled jobs, but to use as political pawns. They need the statistics to prop up demands for more and more taxes, the life blood of politicians. Then they are also combining forces with other interest groups like Moveon.org and La Raza who simply want to destroy the USA as we know it.

Those of us who object to porous borders, irresponsible legislators, foreigners flaunting the law, criminals wandering our streets, and wasted money on social programs are called nativists, xenophobes, and racists. When in fact, we are the ones who have been lied to, promised the impossible, and are cuckold.