“You are dealing with bureaucratic incapacity; the immigration system is currently overwhelmed,” Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies said. “There is no one to the verify millions of identities. Do they know what the documents … from Mexico look like?”
A report suppressed by the INS provides highly embarrassing and potentially politically explosive reading for current immigration reform advocates, concluding the 1986 amnesty actually caused an increase in illegal immigration.
The law failed, the report explains, because it offered an incentive for more illegal aliens to come and take advantage of a future amnesty.
Critics fear the current proposal by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and others would do the same.
The unreleased Clinton-era Immigration and Naturalization Service report shows the 1986 amnesty caused a rise in the number of unauthorized entries into the United States in the years immediately following.
However, the report also concludes that the “public expressions of opposition to immigration,” in particular the California Proposition 187 measure, likely were contributing factors in the decline in the rate of illegal entry after 1990.
In addition to the hope for a second amnesty, the INS drew another conclusion from the data as to why the rate of illegal entry increased.
It said the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was responsible for the increase in unauthorized entry to the U.S. in 1988-89 partly because during those years the rate of females entering illegally increased to twice the 1987 rate.
These women entered the U.S. to join their male partners and family members who had been granted amnesty, in many cases bringing children with them, the report said. The addition of the families increased the strain on limited American resources, the report said.
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