A New Statute of Liberty

Just over a year ago, in the closing days of the 99th Congress, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed, President Reagan signing it into law a few days after the Republicans lost control of the Senate. The new law decreed fines for businesses caught hiring illegal aliens, thereby transferring enforcement duties from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the U.S. business community. The law also granted amnesty to those who could show that they had lived in the U.S. continuously and illegally since before January 1, 1982. (Those who had lived here legally, but without being granted resident-alien status, were not so favored.)

The new law seems to have been enacted in response to a “crisis” that existed mainly in the minds of the nation’s editorial writers (with the Wall Street Journal a notable exception). It is striking, for example, that throughout the six-year push to enact this legislation, it did not receive overwhelming support from legislators in such high-immigration states as Florida and California—states whose economies were doing well and whose unemployment rates were below average. The great supporter of the legislation was Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, a state where illegal aliens can scarcely be said to exist. In short, it is not clear what “crisis” the bill was supposed to correct. High as it may seem, immigration to the U.S. today, as a percentage of the overall population, is less than half what it was in the first two decades of this century.

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Tom Bethell

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Just over a year ago, in the closing days of the 99th Congress, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed, President Reagan signing it into law a few days after the Republicans lost control of the Senate. The new law decreed fines for businesses caught hiring illegal aliens, thereby transferring enforcement duties from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the U.S. business community. The law also granted amnesty to those who could show that they had lived in the U.S. continuously and illegally since before January 1, 1982. (Those who had lived here legally, but without being granted resident-alien status, were not so favored.)

The new law seems to have been enacted in response to a “crisis” that existed mainly in the minds of the nation’s editorial writers (with the Wall Street Journal a notable exception). It is striking, for example, that throughout the six-year push to enact this legislation, it did not receive overwhelming support from legislators in such high-immigration states as Florida and California—states whose economies were doing well and whose unemployment rates were below average. The great supporter of the legislation was Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, a state where illegal aliens can scarcely be said to exist. In short, it is not clear what “crisis” the bill was supposed to correct. High as it may seem, immigration to the U.S. today, as a percentage of the overall population, is less than half what it was in the first two decades of this century.