For years, Trump has been talking about immigration in broad strokes, so that anyone who immigrates to the U.S. from non-European countries (legal or not) is somehow deviant ("They're eating the pets"), subversive (spying for China, Iran, or whatever country is seen as an adversary), or here to replace "us" (white folks).
For years, Trump has been talking about immigration in broad strokes, so that anyone who immigrates to the U.S. from non-European countries (legal or not) is somehow deviant ("They're eating the pets"), subversive (spying for China, Iran, or whatever country is seen as an adversary), or here to replace "us" (white folks).
I was curious about legislative attempts to reform the immigration system post-1965, and, except for tinkering around the edges, nothing significant has been able to become law since 1986 (IRCA). I searched for some info on W's and Obama's attempts at CIR (Comprehensive Immigration Reform), and there's a 2013 article (publicly available) published in the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality that notes:
"While IRCA succeeded in legalizing nearly three million undocumented immigrants, the restrictionist elements of the legislation failed to prevent a massive new population of undocumented immigrants from beginning to form. IRCA’s failure to prevent undocumented immigration created a major problem for Obama’s CIR aspirations. This was because many legislators believed that any new CIR legislation would similarly fail to prevent undocumented immigration. Moreover, given the much larger population of undocumented immigrants, it could allow the legalization of an undocumented population nearly four times larger than that legalized by IRCA."
So, the fear is that IRCA not only failed to prevent undocumented migration into the U.S., it also made three million undocumented folks into legal residents -- with a presumed pathway to citizenship. Any CIR legislation is a no-go for many in Congress because of these elements in IRCA (i.e., lack of undocumented enforcement and a looming threat of making "illegals" into voting citizens).
So, what's left to address immigration issues in the U.S.?
Well, without good-faith efforts to negotiate a CIR in Congress and the Executive Branch, we're left with a reality TV show of raids, arrests, detentions, deportation, tariff threats, and a desire to completely close the border to anything except the movement of goods.
Ted - I remember Simpson-Mazzoli and the sense at that time that Reagan hadn’t solved the issues. Maybe a stopgap. But success would depend on pursuing action against employers of undocumented workers plus more effective border enforcement. Those never came.
Instead came NAFTA, economic disruptions for working class people in US & Mexico, climate changes, posturing & grandstanding…
“without good-faith efforts” has been the subtitle of US immigration & border policy for decades.
J AZ, effective border enforcement would likely work better if there was more employer enforcement. The lobbying against employer enforcement is intense, so what ends up being the status quo is the mess we're in.
For years, Trump has been talking about immigration in broad strokes, so that anyone who immigrates to the U.S. from non-European countries (legal or not) is somehow deviant ("They're eating the pets"), subversive (spying for China, Iran, or whatever country is seen as an adversary), or here to replace "us" (white folks).
I was curious about legislative attempts to reform the immigration system post-1965, and, except for tinkering around the edges, nothing significant has been able to become law since 1986 (IRCA). I searched for some info on W's and Obama's attempts at CIR (Comprehensive Immigration Reform), and there's a 2013 article (publicly available) published in the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality that notes:
"While IRCA succeeded in legalizing nearly three million undocumented immigrants, the restrictionist elements of the legislation failed to prevent a massive new population of undocumented immigrants from beginning to form. IRCA’s failure to prevent undocumented immigration created a major problem for Obama’s CIR aspirations. This was because many legislators believed that any new CIR legislation would similarly fail to prevent undocumented immigration. Moreover, given the much larger population of undocumented immigrants, it could allow the legalization of an undocumented population nearly four times larger than that legalized by IRCA."
Link to full article here: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=ijlse
So, the fear is that IRCA not only failed to prevent undocumented migration into the U.S., it also made three million undocumented folks into legal residents -- with a presumed pathway to citizenship. Any CIR legislation is a no-go for many in Congress because of these elements in IRCA (i.e., lack of undocumented enforcement and a looming threat of making "illegals" into voting citizens).
So, what's left to address immigration issues in the U.S.?
Well, without good-faith efforts to negotiate a CIR in Congress and the Executive Branch, we're left with a reality TV show of raids, arrests, detentions, deportation, tariff threats, and a desire to completely close the border to anything except the movement of goods.
Ted - I remember Simpson-Mazzoli and the sense at that time that Reagan hadn’t solved the issues. Maybe a stopgap. But success would depend on pursuing action against employers of undocumented workers plus more effective border enforcement. Those never came.
Instead came NAFTA, economic disruptions for working class people in US & Mexico, climate changes, posturing & grandstanding…
“without good-faith efforts” has been the subtitle of US immigration & border policy for decades.
J AZ, effective border enforcement would likely work better if there was more employer enforcement. The lobbying against employer enforcement is intense, so what ends up being the status quo is the mess we're in.