The basic narrative of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 is simple and well-known: Conservatives and liberals compromised, trading an illegal-immigrant amnesty for better enforcement going forward. The amnesty happened; the enforcement did not. The experience has haunted the Right ever since, making further compromises in the same vein incredibly difficult.
Often lost, though, is the story of exactly how the law failed and why it wasn’t fixed. Losing Control: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash That Elected Trump, the new book from Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), fills that gap. It explains decades’ worth of developments in the politics and policy of illegal immigration, from the funding of think tanks to the coverage of major newspapers to polls of the general public to votes in Congress. Over all this, the botched 1986 law casts a dark shadow.
Comments