Immigration Reform

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) conducted by President Ronald Reagan is viewed as one of the most important policy implementations in U.S. immigration history. As drafted, IRCA was incorporated to be a policy to control and prevent all illegal immigration that took place in the U.S., but the policy was for basically directed at stopping the flow of Mexican immigrants that continues to this day, to be the largest immigration flow in the world. Daniel Tichenor writes in Dividing Lines, “Originally designed as a restrictive enforcement measure, IRCA proved to be surprisingly expansive in both design and effect.” (Tichenor, 262) The whole process of how the plan eventually backfired due to law enforcements shows why the policy
In the past, the majority of immigrants from Mexico were men that temporarily came to provide for their families and would return to Mexico at the end of the earning season. Men saw amnesty as an opportunity to drastically reduce the costs and risks of going back and forth; however, section 210A(d)(5)(A) complicated matters through its requirement which stated that an applicant must remain in the United States continuously for at least three years in order to obtain permanent residency. The failure of men to be with their families for such an extended timeframe made a staggering improvement of family reunification. The federal government tried to solve this new problem by legalizing the immediate family members of those who received amnesty under IRCA through the Immigration Act of 1990, which kind of contradicted the entire purpose of IRCA because they ended up bringing in even more immigrants whereas their main intention was to put a stop on it overall. Moreover, the procedure of family reunification prompted the feminization of movement and advanced a settlement procedure that assisted the expansion in migration. Settlement became common only after the introduction of women and children. In a few years, IRCA transformed “a predominantly rural, male, and temporary flow of migrant workers into a feminized, urbanized, and
The underground labor market of contractors “worsened labor conditions and decreased wages for both legal and undocumented migrants.” When fear compelled employers to use contractors, both legal and illegal immigrants fell under the employment of contracting companies. A 2006 New York magazine article quotes Steven Lee, a former factory manager, admitting that he did not regret hiring undocumented workers because he needed to make a profit in an industry where his competitors also used the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, the article described how, “The retailers squeeze the manufacturers, the manufacturers squeeze the contractors and the contractors squeeze the workers." Legal immigrants possessed neither the knowhow nor the finances to contest their low wages. The reduction of salaries impacted the amount of remittances sent back to Mexico. This resulted in the need for Mexican families to send more members of the household to work in the U.S. and the need for documented and undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. for a longer period of time. The extended stays led to furtherance of the settlement cycle discussed above. As a result, employee sanctions not only failed to deter immigration, but induced the need for more