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Some time during the next couple of months, Congress is scheduled to consider a crucial set of reforms: those concerning the nation’s immigration policies. Although the various bills that have been proposed over the last three Congresses differ in a number of significant ways, one thing they have in common is an amnesty provision. Simpson-Mazzoli offers amnesty to illegals who have been in the United States since before January 1, 1980; the Rodino and Roybal versions move up the cutoff date to January 1, 1982; while some legislators wish for the still more generous deadline of New Year’s Day, 1984.

There are plenty of voices raised in both chambers denying the virtue and wisdom of amnesty altogether, but so far their successes have been of a negative variety: They have been able to kill legislation so pernicious in its likely effect as to be worse than no legislation at all. For the past three years this attitude toward the question of amnesty has been derided as mulish, quixotic, or troglodytic; but it is precisely the question upon which new studies by Donald L. Huddle, Professor of Economics at Rice University, direct a laser-like beam, suggesting that the amnesty concept represents an enormous threat to the United States, economically, culturally, and demo-graphically.

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Some time during the next couple of months, Congress is scheduled to consider a crucial set of reforms: those concerning the nation’s immigration policies. Although the various bills that have been proposed over the last three Congresses differ in a number of significant ways, one thing they have in common is an amnesty provision. Simpson-Mazzoli offers amnesty to illegals who have been in the United States since before January 1, 1980; the Rodino and Roybal versions move up the cutoff date to January 1, 1982; while some legislators wish for the still more generous deadline of New Year’s Day, 1984.

There are plenty of voices raised in both chambers denying the virtue and wisdom of amnesty altogether, but so far their successes have been of a negative variety: They have been able to kill legislation so pernicious in its likely effect as to be worse than no legislation at all. For the past three years this attitude toward the question of amnesty has been derided as mulish, quixotic, or troglodytic; but it is precisely the question upon which new studies by Donald L. Huddle, Professor of Economics at Rice University, direct a laser-like beam, suggesting that the amnesty concept represents an enormous threat to the United States, economically, culturally, and demo-graphically.