Carrots, Sticks & the Amnesty of '86

In 1986, President Reagan shepherded the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986 (IRCA) through Congress. IRCA permitted the estimated one million illegal immigrants to regularize their status. This legislation adopted a carrot & stick approach. First the carrot: All an alien had to do was prove that they had been here illegally since January 1, 1982 and that they were otherwise a person of good moral character, and volia, the government gave them temporary status, then permanent status, and then (if they wanted it) citizenship.

And now the stick: In exchange for the amnesty, IRCA required employers to verify the lawful immigration status of all of its new hires. New employees would be required to bring a handful of documents to verify that they were in the country legally and were authorized to work. If employers did not comply or knowingly hired an illegal alien, the INS would use their stick and mete out stiff fines or jail time to the employers.

Twenty years later, one million illegal aliens turned into eleven million illegal aliens (how does the census bureau count something that by its nature does not want to be counted?) and we are talking about another amnesty program. Why? What can we learn from ’86?

The amnesty of ’86 did not address the market force that caused one million people to break the law in 1986: The American economy’s demand for cheap low skilled labor. The government attempted to regulate this economic force with the threat of the use of a stick. We made employers surrogate immigration officers, and told them not to hire anybody who did not have the right papers.

Most employers complied with the law and added the immigration verification form to the myriad of forms passed in front of new hire employees. However, knowing that the average American worker would not want to do their job at the wage they were offering (if at all) some employers gambled that the government would not use their stick. And for the most part, the gamble paid off. Illegal immigrants streamed into the USA relativly unfetteed by the Border Patrol and into the arms of employers that needed their skills.

Twenty years of winking at the employment verification system later and inaction on the part of law enforcement, one million illegal immigrants balloon out to eleven. If the Department of Justice had used its stick, funded INS and it enforcement unit, and the workplace raids that we are seeing now had been a normal fixture of American life in the late 80’s and early 90’s they would have changed the labor makrets forever. there would not be eleven million illegal immigrants.

I'd hope that as Congress considers legislation to change the status of the estimated eleven million illegal immigrants, they would consider passing legislation that would address the labor market's need for cheap labor. Threats of fines and jail only work if people are fined and go to jail.