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What do you mean the 1986 amnesty didn’t work?

By Patrick Osio, Jr./HispanicVista.com

   April 27, 2006

 

  

The 1986, Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) contained three main sections:

1.      Control of Illegal Immigration – (Employment prohibition of illegal residents).

2.      Legalization – (Amnesty)

3.      Reform of Legal Immigration – (Temporary Agricultural Workers under the H-2A visa program).

 

To hear those opposed to present immigration reform, IRCA contained only the section on amnesty, disregarding the existence of the other two. The fact is that only the amnesty section worked as legislated. It was the other two that were ignored and created the thrust for the runaway illegal immigration we’ve experienced since 1986.

 

Why would the US Congress and Senate pass a comprehensive law and then work to ignore the very sections that would have prevented better than 95 percent of illegal immigration? Sections that had they been followed as enacted would have all but eliminated illegal immigration at least from Mexico and Central American countries whose citizens illegally enter through the US-Mexico border to take jobs in the agricultural fields and low paying service industries?

 

The problem has been that elected officials have been attempting to serve two masters – their economic and favor giving supporters and US taxpayers. The two sections were doomed even before the enactment of IRCA.

 

Pete Wilson in 1986 serving as a California US Senator before successfully running for Governor of his state, introduced an amendment (Section 287 (8 U.S.C. 1357)) to IRCA reading: “… an officer or employee of the Service may not enter without the consent of the owner (or agent thereof) or a properly executed warrant onto the premises of a farm or other outdoor agricultural operation for the purpose of interrogating a person believed to be an alien as to the person's right to be or to remain in the United States."

 

The amendment made enforcement nearly impossible in the sector that has since the cancellation in 1963 of the Bracero program (temporary agricultural guest worker) been the industry hiring the greatest percentage of illegal immigrants estimated to be in excess of 1.2 million throughout the US during planting and harvesting.  Wilson during his campaigns for office received over a million dollars in contributions from the agricultural industry.

 

To serve the other master, US taxpayers, elected officials come across as tough on illegal immigration. There is always someone else to blame, usually the illegal immigrant as the easy target. The same Pete Wilson campaigning for reelection in 1994, for governor of California blamed illegal immigrants for the economic ills of his state, successfully demonizing them as sub human specimens, but kept from Californians his ‘favor’ to his agricultural benefactors when he served in the senate.

 

Similarly, other politicians from large agricultural sector states receive huge political contributions. Other sectors of American industry have joined the “political contribution” mill to protect their low pay illegal immigrant hiring practices.  So recipient elected officials publicly attacking the evils of illegal immigration protect for their political profit, those hiring the very people they promise to keep out.

 

Yet, IRCA prohibited hiring illegal immigrants setting forth very specific and detailed steps for compliance and penalties for employers refusing to comply. For instance there is even a section prohibiting recruiting potential workers outside the US inducing illegal entry, an occurrence by numerous companies that has recently been exposed by the press.

 

We’ve been treated to such exclamations as, “we have no way of knowing if they’re legal or illegal workers” as the excuse for not bothering to follow IRCA’s sections on verification, which is available to employers.

 

Can any taxpayer recall when in their own Congressional district, the sitting representative has called on local business to demand IRCA compliance or to even ask what problems there might be with IRCA needing Congressional attention for improvement? Not likely, but hearing how if elected or reelected he/she will stop illegal immigration is now a canned presentation.

 

IRCA also had a “guest worker” section known as the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program. Having a legal method to acquire needed labor, why would agricultural enterprises choose to break the law? Could it be because H-2A applicants must comply with a series of requirements, one of which reads: "... this does not relieve the employer from providing to H-2A workers at least the same level of minimum benefits, wages and working conditions which must be offered to U.S. workers ..."?

 

With Wilson’s amendment farmers are assured their fields won’t be raided and it becomes much cheaper to “donate” to politicians than to comply with IRCA.

 

If immigration reform will bring more of the same, why not just enforce IRCA?

________________________________________________________________

Patrick Osio, Jr is Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at PosioJr@hispanicvista.com      

(The opinions expressed by Patrick Osio, Jr. are solely his and do not necessarily reflect those of HispanicVista.com, editorial board of advisors or it’s contributing writers.)

Patrick Osio, Jr. has written a short but intensive manual on the Mexican perspective on numerous issues between our two countries. The manual is an in depth primer on the culture and protocol for better understanding Mexicans that in turn allows establishing personal and business relationships, and how to avoid the most common faux pas that can ruin relationships and business deals.

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