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Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

 
Act of Congress:

Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) (P.L. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359) amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to better control unauthorized immigration. Many members of Congress felt immigration was "out of control" because legal and illegal immigration had come to account for approximately thirty to fifty percent of U.S. population growth.

Congress determined the best way to control immigration was to take away the incentive to enter the United States by preventing illegal immigrants from working or receiving government benefits. The Immigration Reform and Control Act provides sanctions for knowingly hiring an employee who is not legally authorized to work. It requires employers and states to check work authorization documents for every new employee or benefit applicant, including U.S. citizens, and to complete a related form.

Many people were concerned that employer sanctions would lead to discrimination against legal immigrants or U.S. citizens who appeared foreign. To prevent such discrimination, the IRCA imposed penalties on employers who discriminated in this manner. The new employer sanctions, however, could cause great hardships for illegal immigrants who had been living and working in the United States for many years. The IRCA provided a program for certain illegal immigrants who had lived in the United States since at least January 1, 1982, to apply to become legal residents with the right to work. A different program allowed seasonal agricultural workers to apply for legal residency. Newly legal residents could eventually become citizens.

Nonagricultural workers had to prove they had a continuous physical presence in the United States, except for brief, casual, and innocent travel abroad. The Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) required advance permission for any travel abroad, or the immigrant would be ineligible for the legalization program. Several lawsuits contested this advance-permission regulation. The courts invalidated the regulation twelve days before the deadline to file applications for legal resident status. Many immigrants, however, had not been allowed to file applications for legalization, or had not tried to file because they had been told their travel disqualified them from the program.

Immigrants who had been prevented from filing, or had not tried to file because of the invalidated regulation sued to force the INS to accept their late applications. During this litigation Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which removed the courts's jurisdiction to decide complaints from immigrants who had not "in fact" filed a legalization application before the deadline. The constitutionality of the provision is still being litigated in 2003.

Some economic sectors, particularly agriculture, have long relied heavily on labor supplied by illegal immigrants. The IRCA provided for an increase in temporary worker visas when employers could show there were not enough legal workers able, willing, and qualified to perform the work. These provisions have been used predominantly to allow additional seasonal agricultural workers to enter the United States, but they have also been used by employers in technology and other industries.

The IRCA affects every employee in America by requiring citizens and immigrants alike to provide proof of authorization to work before starting a new job. It gave many formerly illegal immigrants the right to live and work in the United States and to eventually become U.S. citizens.

Bibliography

Briggs, Vernon M., Jr., and Stephen Moore. Still an Open Door?: U.S. Immigration Policy and the American Economy. Washington, DC: The American University Press, 1994.

Lanham, Nicholas. Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Immigration Reform. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.

Montwieler, Nancy Humel. The Immigration Reform Law of 1986: Analysis, Text, Legislative History. Washington, DC: BNA Books, 1987.

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Wikipedia: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
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The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), also Simpson-Mazzoli Act (Pub.L. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359, signed by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986) is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law. The Act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants (immigrants who do not possess lawful work authorization), required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status, and granted amnesty to certain illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously. The Act also granted a path towards legalization to certain agricultural seasonal workers and immigrants who had been continuously and illegally present in the United States since January 1, 1982.[1]

Contents

Legislative background and description

Romano L. Mazzoli was a Democratic representative from Kentucky and Alan K. Simpson was a Republican senator from Wyoming who chaired their respective immigration subcommittees in Congress. Their effort was assisted by the recommendations of the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, then President of Notre Dame University. The law criminalized the act of knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant and established financial and other penalties for those employing illegal aliens under the theory that low prospects for employment would reduce illegal immigration. It introduced the I-9 form to ensure that all employees presented documentary proof of their legal eligibility to accept employment in the United States.

These sanctions would only apply to employers that had more than three employees and that did not make a sufficient effort to determine the legal status of their workers.

The first Simpson-Mazzoli Bill was reported out of the House of Senate Judiciary Committees. The bill failed to be received by the House, however, where civil rights advocates were concerned over the potential for abuse and discrimination against Hispanics, growers' groups rallied for additional provisions for foreign labor, and the Chamber of Commerce persistently opposed sanctions against employers.

The second Simpson-Mazzoli Bill finally passed both houses in 1984, but it came apart in the conference committee over the issue of cost. This year marked an important turning point for the reform effort. First, employer opposition to employer sanctions began to subside, placated at least in part by the "affirmative defense" clause in the law which explicitly releases employers from any obligation to check the authenticity of documents presented to them. Second, agricultural employers shifted their focus from opposition to employer sanctions to a concerted campaign to secure alternative sources of foreign labor. As opposition to employer sanctions waned and growers' lobbying efforts for extensive temporary worker programs intensified, agricultural worker programs began to outrank employer sanctions component as the most controversial element of reform.

The following year, Senator Simpson reintroduced the bill that Congressional opponents were now calling "The Monster from the Blue Lagoon". By September, this Senate version had already passed.

Critics of the Act

The legislation is frequently cited by opponents of illegal immigration as a failure in that illegal workers were granted amnesty under the plan. It was estimated that over 2.7 million individuals were given a fast, and easy path to legal status from the 1983 IRCA[2]

Effect upon the labor market

According to one study, the IRCA caused some employers to discriminate against workers who appeared foreign, resulting in a small reduction in overall Hispanic employment.[3] Another study stated that if hired, wages were being lowered to compensate employers for the perceived risk of hiring foreigners.[4]

The hiring process also changed as employers turned to indirect hiring through subcontractors. "Under a subcontracting agreement, a U.S. citizen or resident alien contractually agrees with an employer to provide a specific number of workers for a certain period of time to undertake a defined task at a fixed rate of pay per worker".[4] "By using a subcontractor the firm is not held liable since the workers are not employees. The use of a subcontractor decreases a worker's wages since a portion is kept by the subcontractor. This indirect hiring is imposed on everyone regardless of legality".[4]

References

  1. ^ Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2007. Nation of Emigrants. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. pg 179
  2. ^ Ohlemacher, Steven (March 7, 2006). "Number of Illegal Immigrants Hits 12M". Associated Press. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/07/D8G6U2KO8.html. Retrieved 2006-11-19. 
  3. ^ Lowell, Lindsay; Jay Teachman; Zhongren Jing (November 1995). "Unintended Consequences of Immigration Reform: Discrimination and Hispanic Employment". 'Demography' 32 (4): 617–628. doi:10.2307/2061678. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0070-3370%28199511%2932%3A4%3C617%3AUCOIRD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P. Retrieved 2007-11-29. 
  4. ^ a b c Massey, Douglas S. (2007). "Chapter 4: Building a Better Underclass". Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russel Sage Foundation. pp. 143–145. 

See also

External links


 
 

 

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