Illegal Immigration Code
Introduction
Illegal Immigration has grown fundamentally since 1970. The failure of various laws regarding the immigration policy has given way to the flood of immigration. The concern over this matter has been a subject in the national agenda in the U.S since 1970 because it has made its impact on the culture, economy and politics. The United States has displayed its uniqueness by being a nation that has taken up people from more than 170 countries around the world thus summing up to an amount of about 70 million and has experienced an influx of 11 million immigrants.1 This paper aims to illustrate the various literature available about the Illegal Immigration Code.
Illegal Immigration Code and the Economy
Illegal Immigration seemed to increase in size and flow regardless of the national legislation that aimed at controlling it during the 1990s thus prompting political pressure to do more. States receiving the highest number of illegal immigrants were California, Florida and Texas. These states sued the federal government in their own federal district courts for an estimated amount of dollars in billions they had for costs that were associated with illegal immigrants and their offspring. Proposition 187 was an immigration measure that was passed in 1994 by the state of California in an attempt to lessen the draw of its economy and services as a result of this. In this document, it was stipulated that the people of California were facing economic difficulties due to the presence of illegal immigrants. In addition personal injury and damage was also experienced as a result of criminal conduct by the immigrants.2
Similar notions have been expressed whereby the discussion on the U.S immigration policy alongside issues such as unemployment, racism and crime have stirred up a sense of cultural, racial and socio-economic anxieties. However, it has been observed that although the immigrants have low skills and happen to be less educated than the original inhabitants of the United States they have proven to be assets to the underground economy and have taken up employment in areas that the Native Americans refuse to accept. According to some liberal trade unionists, immigrants are used in order to cause the lowering of wage levels. An interesting fact is that conservative free-marketers among others strongly support the increase in immigration since they are the ones who mostly benefit from labor. The immigration issue is therefore an incorporation of labor economics, racism, ethnicity, nationality and multiculturalism.
Numerous immigrants that are located in the Los Angeles area are said to have contributed significantly to the local economy whereby they are the reason for the remarkable increase in share of the population. Los Angeles has lost most of its manufacturing base similar to the Midwests rust bowl. By tradition, the city depended on blue collar and unionized labor. However, it added 225,000 jobs which were 25 percent of the countrys total and over half of them went to the latest immigrants. In addition, by 1980 immigrants had accounted for more than 50 percent of the labor force in several manufacturing industries.
During the 1970s, the period had been depicted as a decade of stagflation due to the unique mixture of double-digit employment and inflation. These troubling economic circumstances, together with a change in the national origin of both the legal and an increasing number of illegal immigrants from areas such as northwestern Europe and toward Latin America and Asia have encouraged the calls for extensive changes in immigration. One such shift in policy was intended for illegal immigration and was sanctioned by employers who wanted to discourage it as included in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). 5
Changes in Immigration to the United States
Immigration to the U.S. has experienced significant changes three times. The first change concerned the increase in legal immigration which was a result of the passage of the 1965 revision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The second involved the change in the national origin composition of immigrants originating in the 1950s which resulted in the rise in the number of people coming from Asia, Latin America or Caribbean countries by about 75 percent in the 1970s and over 80 percent in the 1980s.
An increase in the illegal immigration was experienced in the third change which had began in 1964 after the end of an agreement between the United States and Mexico for temporary workers in agriculture known as the Bracero Program. During this time, the number of illegal immigrant workers was increasing as well as a rise in the immigration of people who were in the country legally but chose to stay when their visa expiration dates were overdue. As a response somewhat to these tendencies, a Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy was set up in 1978 with a directive to study all the characteristics of U.S. immigration policy. In a final report by the commission, it was concluded that the issue of illegal immigration was the most critical. This view was also common among the general public such as southern California where 87 percent of people who responded to this issue in an early 1980s survey were of the idea that illegal immigration was serious.6
Due to these changes, a movement to reform the immigration policy of the United States was made. Numerous legislators and citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s had the opinion that the nation had lost control of its borders and also the fact that the costs of immigration seemed to overshadow the benefits.
The IRCA which is the legislation with the most extensive revision of the U.S. immigration policy since the national origins quota system was eliminated in 1965, has the main objective of reducing illegal immigration. The expectation was to be achieved in two ways which were
Legalization of illegal immigrants who were already in the country by means of a regular legalization program plus a legalization program that was meant for special agricultural workers.
Reduction of future flow of immigrants into the country by imposing punishments on employers who employ workers who have entered the country illegally.
According to the numbers witnessed, the legalization programs had succeeded whereby the regular programs registered about 1.8 million applications while the special agricultural workers had 1.3 million applications. However, it is difficult to determine whether the IRCA has changed the number of illegal immigrants entering the country.
By 1995, 60 percent of immigrants who had lived in the United States had entered the country without being inspected while 40 percent had disobeyed the terms of their visas after entering the country through legal means. Members of the SCIRP (Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy) by a vote of fourteen to two suggested to the Congress to pass legislation that made it illegal for employers to hire illegal immigrants in order to deny them jobs.
Recently, the immigration reform has been a subject that has been talked about at length. Official pardons like those of 1986 have been suggested where strict regulations such as greater fines and paying of back taxes before living in the country have been put forth.8
Conclusion
Illegal immigration has been a major issue since the 1960s after the end of the Bracero Program which was an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico for temporary workers in agriculture. Immigration had experienced three major changes.
During the late 1980s criminal activity had been connected to the presence of illegal immigrants in California and about 87 percent of the residents had complained that it was becoming a serious matter.
Despite these facts, numbers have shown that illegal immigrants have contributed to the growth of the economy in an important way. The have contributed to 50 percent of the labor force in manufacturing industries in the country.
Recently, the issue of immigration has become a major subject whereby similar official pardons similar those of 1986 have been suggested but with several conditions to be fulfilled.
Table 1
Distribution of Mexican Immigrants by State of Residency from 1940 to 2000
Gateway States 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Arizona 7.2 6.7 6.3 4.5 3.3 3.7 2.6
California 35.6 34.0 41.9 52.7 57.0 62.9 35.4
Illinois 2.5 2.6 4.8 6.2 7.7 4.9 6.1
New Mexico 4.2 2.1 1.8 0.8 0.8 0.9 0.8
Texas 39.5 44.5 35.9 26.5 22.6 14.9 16.4
All Other States 11.1 10.2 9.4 9.4 8.5 12.8 35.3
Source Michael C. Lemay, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A REFERENCE HANDBOOK (Santa Barbara ABC-CLIO, 2007)
Table 2
Immigration by State, by Share of Population and Arrival since 2000
State Immigrants Share of Population Arrivals
California 9,984,000 27.8 1,809,000
New York 3,900,000 20.5 707,000
New Jersey 1,620,000 18.7 312,000
Florida 3,203,000 18.3 648,000
Hawaii 215,000 17.2 22,000
Nevada 408,000 17.1 90,000
Texas 3,379,000 15.1 948,000
Arizona 851,000 14.8 198,000
Massachusetts 880,000 13.8 201,000
Washington, D.C. 74,000 13.5 24,000
Maryland 725,000 13.1 212,000
Rhode Island 126,000 11.9 24,000
Illinois 1,417,000 11.3 286,000
Washington 650,000 10.6 137,000
Connecticut 363,000 10.4 67,000
Colorado 443,000 9.8 117,000
Virginia 719,000 9.7 188,000
Source Michael C. Lemay, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A REFERENCE HANDBOOK (Santa Barbara ABC-CLIO, 2007)
Notes
See Michael C. LeMay, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A REFERENCE HANDBOOK, p. xv.
See Michael C. LeMay Elliott Robert Barkan, US IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION LAWS AND ISSUES, p.296.
See Seth N. Asumah Matthew Todd Bradley, MAKING SENSE OF U.S IMMIGRATION POLICY AND MULTICULTURALISM.
See Michael Fix, THE PAPER CURTAIN EMPLOYER SANCTIONS IMPLEMENTATION, IMPACT AND REFORM, p. 98.
See Michael C. LeMay, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A REFERENCE HANDBOOK, p.xvi.
See Frank D. Bean, Barry Edmonston, Jeffrey S. Passel Program for Research on Immigration Policy (U.S.), UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES IRCA AND THE EXPERIENCE OF THE 1980s, p.1-2.
See Nicholas Laham, RONALD REAGAN AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM, p.4.
See Immigration Reform and Control Act.
HYPERLINK httpwww.usimmigrationsupport.orgirca.html httpwww.usimmigrationsupport.orgirca.html