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Essay / The best or worst immigration policy? - 2370
The Best or Worst Immigration PolicyThe Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) is considered one of the most important policy implementations in history immigration to the United States. As written, IRCA was intended to be a policy to control and deter illegal immigration to the United States, but the policy was actually intended to stop the flow of Mexican immigrants that continues to to be the largest immigration flow in the world. Daniel Tichenor writes in Dividing Lines that “Originally conceived as a restrictive enforcement measure, the IRCA has proven to be surprisingly broad, both in its conception and its effects. » By identifying the law's unintended consequences, this article explores why the policy failed. Ultimately, this article shows that IRCA expanded immigration by creating greater need as well as unintentionally breaking traditional temporal and seasonal migration patterns. The objectives of the IRCA The editors of the IRCA developed three objectives: regularize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants. migrants, to deter immigration through stricter enforcement and to avoid the need for immigration. Each goal aimed to ultimately solve the “immigration problem” by significantly reducing the number of migrants coming to the United States; however, each of them actually increased immigration. The first objective of the IRCA was to regularize the status of millions of undocumented migrants by legalizing those who entered before January 1982, as well as those who performed temporary services or work, mainly seasonal agricultural workers. This appears contrary to IRCA's goal of limiting immigration to the United States; however, legislators considered this first goal necessary. First, the amnesty addressed the problem of the presence of ...... middle of paper ...... AL., supra note 1, at p. 344. William Robinson, Aquí estamos y no nos vamos! Global Capital and Immigrant Rights, 48 Race and Class no. 2, 2006, p. 81. Julie A. Phillips and Douglas S. Massey, The New Labor Market: Immigrants and Wages After IRCA, 36 Demography, no. 2, 1999 at 224.Id.Id.Phillips & Massey, supra note 24, at 224.Id.Id.at 225.Id.Celia Dugger, Raid and Release—A Special Report; A tattered Crackdown on Illegal Workers, NY TIMES, June 3, 2006. Id. Phillips & Massey, supra note 24, at 224. Id. Phillips & Massey, supra note 24, at 225. COMM'N FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, UNAUTHORIZED MIGRATION: A RESPONSE TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (1990).ROMERO, supra note 2, at 248Id.Id.Id.ROMERO, supra note 2, at 205.TICHENOR, supra note 3, at 262.