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Illigal Imagration/ Reform. The current immigration law in the United States
is an adaptation of laws developed in the 1920’s. These ...
Submitted by mibirney on March 31, 2008
Category: Social Issues
Words: 1867 | Pages: 8
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The current immigration law in the United States is an adaptation of laws developed in the 1920’s. These laws set limits on the number of immigrants coming in to the U.S. from specific countries. The current level of immigrants allowed in is 700,000 a year, but with illegal immigration almost doubling that number new, laws were required.
The first real attempt at curbing the flow of illegal immigration came in 1986 with the IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act). This law sought to eliminate the main reason for illegal immigration, employment. Under IRCA employers who knowingly hired illegal were fined. The employers were required to check potential employees status against an INS database, but this database was never created. The employer was now expected to verify the status themselves. This did not work either due to widespread document forgeries. Many critics of IRCA claim that the law was destined to fail. Under IRCA 2.7 million illegal were legalized and for every 1 worker granted amnesty 4 illegal to his place.
In 1996 illegal immigration laws were again revised with the IIRIRA (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act). This law appeared to be tougher on illegal with a brief period of increased deportations. Minor offences such as shoplifting would you a candidate for deportation. Border patrol had 1000 new agents added to their ranks. After two years of INS raids and innovative new tactics for curbing illegal immigration many politicians and businessmen became very critical of enforcement. After enough pressure was applied the INS almost completely stopped their raids. Again this law only prevented a very small percentage of illegal from crossing our borders.
In light of September 11 it was recognized that tighter border security was necessary to prevent terrorists from crossing the southern border with ease. It was apparent that all previous laws were completely ineffective with 10 – 15 million illegal...
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