Immigration Policy since 1965
Source Database: American Journey Online: The Immigrant Experience
Table of Contents
UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS | LEGAL IMMIGRATION | PENDING PROPOSALS | THE FUTURE | FURTHER RESOURCES | RELATED ITEMS | SOURCE CITATION
Immigration again became a major concern for the United States government as the influx of newcomers surged after changes to immigration policy were enacted in 1965. Policymakers focused on questions relating not only to refugees but to undocumented immigrants and the composition of the legal immigrant flow. They sought to define more accurately who deserved the status of refugee and to prevent the undeserving from claiming it. They attempted to find means that would discourage illegal entry into the country without endangering the civil liberties of those rightfully present. They tried to undo unintended consequences of the 1965 amendments and to reconcile the criteria for admission with the economic interests of the overall society.
Beginning in the 1970s, many commentators suggested that undocumented immigration posed three potential threats to the national interest. Entry without inspection (EWI) was an affront to the sovereignty of the United States; it implied that the nation could neither protect its territorial integrity nor control the composition of its population. The presence of large numbers of residents living in fear of discovery by the authorities also created an underclass of people who dared not protest violations of their rights. Likewise, by their numbers and vulnerability to exploitation, the illegals swelled the pool of unskilled labor and undermined the position of workers who were natives or legal resident aliens.
Experts disagreed about the seriousness of these threats. Pessimists pointed out that upward of 1.5 million people entered the United States illegally each year, while optimists pointed out that only 200,000 of them would remain in the country over the long term. Optimists argued that the undocumented took only jobs that others would not accept, and that their pay and status improved as they learned English and gained experience. Pessimists claimed that the availability of undocumented laborers removed any incentives for employers to attract workers by improving pay and conditions.
The Select Commission on the Reform of Immigration Policy, established under the administration of President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), devoted much of its attention to the issue of undocumented immigration. During the first half of the 1980s, its recommendations became the focus of congressional debate. In 1986, Congress finally put several of the proposals in the law books in the form of an Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Congress also passed a measure to discourage would-be immigrants from attempting to gain entry by arranging fraudulent marriages with American citizens.
IRCA was a multipronged attack on undocumented immigration. It substantially increased the size of the border patrol, whose officers are responsible for preventing illegal entries. IRCA's main initiative, however, was to impose sanctions on employers who persisted in hiring undocumented aliens. Henceforth, employers would be required to ask new employees to present documents such as birth certificates or alien registration cards indicating their right to work in the United States. Those employers not making a good-faith effort to comply faced civil, and eventually criminal, penalties.
IRCA also sought to reduce the size of the exploitable population by instituting a program offering an amnesty legalization to persons who had illegally entered the United States before 1982 and had remained in the country since then. As a concession to agricultural employers, who complained that the new law would deprive them of necessary labor, IRCA also provided opportunities for legal status for various groups of agricultural laborers, including those who had been farm workers for 90 days between May 1985 and May 1986. By 1992, more than 2.5 million people had taken advantage of these programs.
Undocumented immigration continues to be a problem. Policing the lengthy southern border of the United States is difficult, despite such endeavors as the building of a steel wall along particularly active stretches of the border near San Diego. Smuggling of undocumented immigrants is also on the rise; some smugglers have brought to both U.S. coasts shiploads of undocumented immigrants from as far away as China. Finally, readily available counterfeit documents, whose validity employers need not question under IRCA rules, have compromised the effort to prevent the hiring of illegals and led to calls for more secure forms of identification.
Critics also found reasons to complain about the legal immigration generated by the 1965 amendments. The growing numbers of people finding their way to the United States became a cause for concern. So, too, did the composition of the influx. While the dramatic shift to Asian and Latin American sources provoked some racism, some commentators argued that the mechanics of the law placed unfair obstacles in the path of European applicants seeking admission. Finally, to some, the emphasis on family reunification seemed inappropriate; they argued that selecting immigrants for their skills would yield a group more likely to succeed in the United States.
Congress attempted to address the full range of concerns when it passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 (IMMACT90), the first major recodification of the overall law since the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. IMMACT90 established, for the first time, a target for combined annual admissions of relatives under both quota and nonquota programs. The target was set at 480,000. The law favored children and spouses of citizens at the expense of other family members. It did not, however, impose a real cap on family admissions. The parents, spouses, and minor, unmarried children of American citizens could continue to enter the United States without regard to overall or per-country numerical limits. The law actually allowed the numerical limit on the admission of extended-family members to increase on a sliding scale from 226,000 to as many as 480,000 in years when the number of entries by immediate relatives fell below 254,000.
Congress did not tamper with the principle that each nation should have an equal maximum number of quota visas each year. It did, however, seek to address the complaint that the recent arrival of Asians and Latin Americans and the emphasis on family reunification in American immigration law gave persons from those regions an unfair edge in securing admission to the United States.Europeans argued that, because their forebears had come in an earlier era, they were at a disadvantage unintended by the drafters of the 1965 reform. As a result, many Europeans had become undocumented immigrants. The largest numbers of European illegals were Irish and Poles who had come to the United States after 1982 and were thus ineligible for relief under IRCA.
To alleviate the problems confronting Europeans, IMMACT90 set aside as many as 55,000 visas annually for the purpose of increasing ethnic diversity in the immigrant population--40,000 per year in the first three years, and 55,000 thereafter. The diversity visas would be available only to nationalities that had had low rates of immigration to the United States in recent years. Natives of Ireland, the country deemed most adversely affected by the 1965 legislation, would have first dibs on at least 16,000 of the 40,000 visas available in each of the first three years of the program.
Finally, IMMACT90 sought to increase the amount of occupationally-based immigration. It increased from 54,000 to 140,000 the number of visas set aside each year for professionals and other highly skilled workers. However, the legislation retained the goal of recruiting persons whose skills were unique or in short supply in the American economy.
Despite the passage of legislation, Washington has maintained its focus on the immigration issue. Persisting problems with illegal immigration and the perceived abuses of social welfare programs by some legal immigrants have led to calls for more stringent legislative initiatives, such as California's Proposition 187. The California initiative denied undocumented immigrants access to almost all social services, including public housing and nonemergency medical care. The law met with opposition from immigrant groups, and as of mid-1996 it had not been implemented, pending a challenge in court. Meanwhile, the Republican Congress elected in 1994 has endorsed denying education and welfare to the undocumented and has acted to make even legal immigrants ineligible for most federal benefits programs, including food stamps and Medicaid. It has also moved to hold citizens who sponsor relatives for immigration financially responsible for their support, a provision of the law that has not been enforced in the past.
The 1980 federal census was the first decennial count to ask the ethnic origin of each member of the population, regardless of the number of generations his or her family had been in the United States. A very large majority of respondents reported one or more non-American points of origin. The most frequently mentioned ancestries were English (21.9 percent), German (21.7 percent), and Irish (17.7 percent). On the other hand, whites unable or unwilling to identify a European country of ancestry (14.5 percent) constituted the fourth-largest bloc. Moreover, the majority of whites claimed more than one European heritage, which strongly suggested that intermarriage had substantially blunted the salience of ethnic identity.
Yet the 1960s and the 1970s witnessed an important reassertion of ethnic identities. As society's tolerance of diversity increased, a growing body of scholarship recognized that, although it did not determine behavior, ethnic background had not disappeared as a factor affecting social interactions and political choices. Race, most observers agreed, was even more important.
Many commentators were troubled by what they termed an increased emphasis on cultural differences among ethnic and racial groups. Critics also rejected as unwise the political establishment's new willingness to embrace diversity as enthusiastically as it had once endorsed heavy-handed Americanization programs. They worried that the change in attitude distorted the American motto E pluribus unum (from many, one) by putting too much emphasis on the "pluribus" and not enough on the "unum." The shift could lead to social disorder and ultimately to the disunification of America.
Political reaction against multiculturalism took several forms, including a movement to make English the official language of the United States. Calls for a sharp reduction in immigration were revived by reports that, if present trends in migration and fertility continued, persons of non-Hispanic European descent would become a minority in America by the middle of the 21st century.
Deciphering what is actually happening in the United States in regard to ethnic identity is very difficult. Some proponents of multiculturalism clearly envision a society substantially different from that sought in the past by supporters of assimilation. Most users of the term multiculturalism, however, seem to foresee an outcome not substantially different from that typically symbolized by the word pluralism. They call for an inclusive society that respects the traditions of all its peoples and does not actively attempt to eradicate them.
What will happen in the United States depends on a combination of political decisions and social processes. Future governmental action can fundamentally affect the pace at which change occurs, as it has in the past. Congress can restrict the volume of immigration or, by de-emphasizing family reunification as a principle by which to distribute visas, alter its ethnic composition.Federal and state policies that encourage assimilation or facilitate the retention of original cultures also affect immigrants' behavior. Having the greatest impact, however, will be the extent to which immigrants and members of minorities experience economic and occupational mobility. Mobility will encourage interaction and mixing among peoples of different origins; immobility will lock groups into potentially antagonistic relationships that emphasize the social distance and differences among them.
FURTHER READINGS
FURTHER RESOURCES
- BOOKS
- Alba, Richard D. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, c1990
- Fuchs, Lawrence H. The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, CT, c1990
- Lieberson, Stanley. A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880. University of California Press: Berkeley, c1980
- Patterson, Orlando. Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse. Stein and Day: New York, 1977
- Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. University of California Press: Berkeley, c1990
- Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Disuniting of America. Norton: New York, 1992
- Steinberg, Stephen. Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Beacon Press: Boston, 1995
- Takaki, Ronald T. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Little, Brown & Co.: Boston, c1993
- Waters, Mary C. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. University of California Press: Berkeley, c1990
- MUSEUMS AND HISTORIC SITES
- Ellis Island, New York Harbor, NY
- Liberty Island, New York Harbor, NY
- Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
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Source Citation: "Immigration Policy since 1965." American Journey Online: The Immigrant Experience. Primary Source Microfilm, 1999.
Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/
Document Number: CD2154000256
