The last time a major piece of immigration reform legislation was passed by the U.S. government was 1986. Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on November 6, 1986 as means to secure the border and establish a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Will the 2013 immigration reform bill ultimately arrive at the President’s desk, almost thirty years after its counterpart passed under Reagan?
If the past is any indication, the 2013 version of reform still has hope in passing through the legislative branch, despite more than a few recent setbacks. Examining the similarities between the 1986 and 2013 bills help us understand that reform is still possible.
Both bills came at a time of desperate need for reform, decades after the most recent major reform laws
In 1986, the most recent prior immigration legislation was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, an important set of laws that completely restructured the demographic makeup of U.S. immigrants. However, after the influx of unauthorized immigrants in the 1970s and early 80s, it was clear the Immigration and Nationality Act wasn’t enough.
We are seeing the same issues with IRCA in 2013, 27 years later: it does not address the needs of the current U.S. economy and immigrant population. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (referred to here as the 2013 bill) is an attempt to modernize immigration policy for a U.S. economy with great demand for high-skilled immigrant workers and attempts to address the now 11+ million undocumented immigrants living here as a second class, with no laws currently in place to realistically solve the problem.
The 1986 and 2013 bills are both derived from several previous unsuccessful attempts at reform
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter proposed new legislation that would secure the border, impose fines on employers who hired undocumented workers, and grant a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. His efforts were shot down by Congress, but led to the formation of a commission led by Reverend Theodore Hesburgh that made recommendations for new immigration policy in 1981.
In 1982, the first iteration of what would become IRCA was introduced to Congress, and it ended up dying in the House of Representatives. The bill was reintroduced and subsequently died again in the House in 1984. The bill was finally revived in the fall of 1986 and passed into law, and it is still the basis for most of our immigration policies today.
U.S. political leaders and legislators had/have extreme doubts about both bills passing
Many were shocked by the 1986 bill’s final success after years of heated debates and setbacks. U.S. labor groups were mostly opposed to IRCA: they very concerned about the new I-9 form requirements and employment enforcement policies, which harshly punished employers for hiring undocumented workers for the first time in U.S. history. Employers and civil rights groups were also concerned about a possible national ID system stemming from these new enforcement policies, which never ended up happening.
The 1986 bill was declared practically dead just weeks before it was signed. Thanks to several last-minute compromises, it passed. U.S. Representative Dan Lungren said the following about IRCA’s passing, “It’s been a rocky road to get here. We thought we had a corpse. But on the way to the morgue, a toe began to twitch.” In the face of all the issues and doubters, the 1986 Congress found a way to get the bill to the President’s desk, thereby changing the course of immigration and impacting immigrants’ lives for years to come.
