9/06/2006

The comprehensive immigration reform in 1986 under the name of Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), legalized masse undocumented aliens. This legislation turned out to be a failure when it comes to the nation's policy on border security and immigration enforcement as 13 million undocumented aliens have flooded into this country during the 20-year period of time since the immigration reform. The IRCA failed to prevent flood of undocumented aliens and enforced immigration and the Congress should analyze carefully the sources of the failure and try to learn the lessons from the IRCA failure.

One of key reasons reportedly lies with the IRCA's failure to expand avenues for "legal immigration" to meet the U.S. economy's continuing demand for workers. According to the Immigration Policy Center report, no amount of enforcement, either at the border or in the work place, can compensate for the inadequacy of existing legal limits on immigration to the U.S. Thus unless legal channels of immigration are revamped to accommodate the actual demand for immigration workers in the U.S., the border and immigration enforcement efforts will continue to be undermined by economic reality.

If the current political stalemate over immigration reform is any indication, many U.S. policymakers have yet to heed the lessons of recent history when it comes to
formulating a realistic strategy to control undocumented immigration. In 1986, lawmakers passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in an attempt to reign in
undocumented immigration through heightened worksite and border enforcement, combined with legalization of most undocumented immigrants already in the country. Unfortunately, IRCA failed to offer a long-term solution to the problem of undocumented immigration because: 

(1) it did not expand avenues for legal immigration to match the U.S. economy’s continuing demand for immigrant workers; 

(2) it did not create an effective system through which employers could verify that their employees are authorized to work in the United States; and 

(3) the employer sanctions provisions of the bill were weakly enforced. Lawmakers should take care not to make the same mistakes in crafting new immigration reform legislation. Among the findings of this report: Over the past 20 years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended numerous times, without success, that Congress and the immigration service reduce the number of identity documents acceptable for proving work eligibility and make those documents fraud and tamper resistant.

Although the immigration enforcement budget as a whole rose from $1 billion in 1985 to $4.9 billion in 2002, the share devoted to investigations, which was responsible for worksite enforcement and sanctions, fell from 11 percent to 9 percent during that time.

Since 1997, the annual number of arrests of undocumented workers has fallen from 17,552 to 445, cases completed from 7,537 to 2,194, and notices of intent to fine issued to employers from 862 to 3. Border enforcement, which today has become the primary means of controlling undocumented immigration, only had a secondary role under IRCA. The shortcomings of IRCA and its implementation over the past 20 years illustrate that: 

(1) no amount of immigration enforcement can compensate for the inadequacy of existing legal limits on immigration; 

(2) employers will not be able to accurately determine whether or not their employees are authorized to work until a reliable employee verification process is created; 

(3) once an effective verification process is in place, policymakers must be willing to expend the resources needed to crack down on employers who continue hiring undocumented workers; and 

(4) immigration reform must address the status of the 12 million undocumented immigrants now living in the country.

If the current political stalemate over immigration reform is any indication, many U.S. policymakers have yet to heed the lessons of recent history when it comes to formulating a realistic strategy to control undocumented immigration. A number of lawmakers have become fixated on the notion that border fences and other enforcement measures are the most promising means of stemming undocumented migration into the country, even though the past two decades of escalating border enforcement have witnessed unprecedented growth in the size of the undocumented population. 

Lawmakers remain divided over key questions such as whether or not to grant legal status to some or all of the 12 million undocumented immigrants now living in the United States, and whether or not new enforcement measures should be accompanied by an expansion of legal avenues for temporary or permanent immigration as well.

Although these and many other questions surrounding immigration reform are complex and controversial, the answers already have been suggested by the 20 years of experience garnered since the last time Congress implemented comprehensive immigration reform legislation. In the 1980s, lawmakers confronted an immigration quandary very similar to that which we confront today: a growing number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border, settling in the United States, and joining the workforce. 

 

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