Illegal Immigration in the U.S.: History, Economics, and Law

Introduction: A Nation of Immigrants

It has been pointed out many times that the United States is a nation of immigrants, with only the Native American population having been here long enough to claim to be native to the land. Immigration has been a contentious issue for some time, long before the current level of concern related to fears of terrorism and economic impact. Economic impact was long raised as something to be considered, but racial and ethnic attitudes also affected levels of all immigration. As the immigration system evolved and responded to new situations, so did laws concerning illegal immigration and the nature of proposals offered to address the problem.

Between 1820 and 1910, at least 38 million Europeans arrived in the United States, driven by a number of forces: the Napoleonic Wars; political disturbances in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Greece, and Poland; the Potato Famine in Ireland; religious persecutions of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Czarist Russia and other parts of Europe; the Industrial Revolution, which created thousands of unemployed workers and peasants; and a rigid social structure that supported a closed aristocracy and upper class. Millions of people left their homelands in search of a better life. The United States at the time was expanding into the West and Southwest, all the way to the Pacific Coast. The Louisiana Purchase had more than doubled the size of the country, and the concept of Manifest Destiny pushed its boundary to the other sea. The Industrial Revolution was shaping life in the United States, and factories, timberlands, and manufacturing plants all needed workers. The masses from Europe were thus more or less welcomed as cheap labor, and the immigrants in turn found cheaper land and higher wages than they had known in Europe (Lewis, 1993, p. 1/3).

This immigration—and subsequent waves from Asia—did not take place without tensions. The Gold Rush in California after 1849 attracted people from across America and from China, with many Chinese workers arriving before the Civil War to provide cheap labor for building the railroads.

Historical Development of U.S. Immigration Law

By 1882, there were approximately 300,000 low-wage Chinese laborers in America. Because they were taking jobs from U.S. citizens, and because they were different in color, culture, habits, and appearance, these workers were targeted for antagonism and racial hatred. As a result, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, completely banning non-citizen Chinese from immigrating to the United States. This law remained in effect until 1943 (Lewis, 1993, p. 1/4).

In 1917, an Immigration Act was passed to restrict the entry of immigrants, especially illiterate laborers from central and eastern Europe, marking the beginning of a great shift in American immigration policy. After World War I, America faced hard times and the immigrant became the scapegoat for economic difficulties. A tight national-origins policy was instituted in 1921 as a temporary measure, limiting total immigration to about 350,000 per year, with each country's annual quota set at 3% of all nationals from that country living in the United States as recorded by the 1910 census. The system was made permanent with the National Origins Act of 1924, now based on the ethnic composition of the United States as reflected in the 1920 census, with entry limited to 2% of the number of people from each country then living in the U.S. The law thus reduced the total number of immigrants each year to 150,000. It also sought to favor certain kinds of immigrants: more were permitted from western Europe and fewer from southern and eastern Europe, while Asians were totally excluded—primarily to prohibit Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos from acquiring U.S. citizenship.

These restrictions were relaxed after World War II. A new category of naturalized Americans emerged: thousands of alien soldiers who had earned citizenship by serving with the U.S. Armed Forces overseas. The War Brides Act of 1945 facilitated the reunion of 118,000 alien spouses and children with members of the armed forces who had fought and married overseas. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 allowed 400,000 refugees to be admitted over the following two years, most from Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia. When the Iron Curtain descended on eastern Europe, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 allowed 214,000 refugees from Communist countries to enter, and the Freedom Fighters from Hungary were paroled into the United States after the failure of their revolution in 1956 (Lewis, 1993, pp. 1/4–1/5).

With the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, all immigration laws were consolidated into a single statute that forms the basis of immigration law to this day. The racially-based National Origin Quota, however, was not abolished until 1965. Two general pathways to immigrant status emerged: family relationship and employment needs of the United States. A preference system established priority for some groups over others; skilled workers were given higher priority than unskilled workers after 1965. The immigration law was further modified in 1976 and 1978. Separate quotas for the eastern and western hemispheres were abolished, and a worldwide quota of 290,000 was established, with each country receiving a yearly quota of 20,000—except Hong Kong, which as a colony of Great Britain received 5,000.

With the end of the Vietnam War, a flow of refugees from the Indochinese peninsula required additional legislative response. In 1980, Congress passed the Refugee Act, which removed preferential treatment of refugees from Communist countries and defined a refugee as someone who fears persecution in their home country because of religious or political beliefs, race, national origin, or ethnic identity. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986—more commonly known as the Amnesty Law—increased the number of alien immigrants by legalizing the status of those already in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1990 was the most comprehensive overhaul of immigration law since 1965. It provided for immigration of 700,000 annually in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and 675,000 in 1995. It was intended to attract immigrants with education, skills, or capital to enhance the economic life of the country, making it easier for scientists, engineers, inventors, and other highly skilled professionals to enter the United States. Citizens of nations with little immigration over the prior five years were allocated 40,000 immigrant visas each year. The spouses and children of illegal immigrants granted amnesty under the 1986 law were also entitled to become residents, and special consideration was given to Irish people, Hong Kong residents, certain groups from Lebanon, Tibetan nationals, and Filipino World War II veterans. The refugee policy was expanded to include people fleeing war or natural disasters such as earthquakes (DeMoss, 1991, pp. 35–36). However, as applied, the refugee policy has been highly controversial—as illustrated by the exclusion of Haitian refugees on grounds that they were economic rather than political refugees (Foreign Policy, 1994, p. 197).

Brent Ashabranner cites the case of Roberto, who lives in a Los Angeles boardinghouse and leaves each morning to walk to a street where mostly Hispanic men in work clothes gather on the sidewalk hoping for work. Most are illegal immigrants, as is Roberto, and they wait for a labor recruiter to select them for a day's work on a construction job. Hiring illegal aliens is against the law, but some employers take the risk because these workers accept lower pay and expect no job benefits. Roberto, like many illegal immigrants, lacks much formal education and could not find work in his native Mexico. Knowing he would never be approved as a legal immigrant, he crossed the border illegally. He works two or three times a week and barely earns enough to live on, but it is still more than he could make in Mexico (Ashabranner, 1996, pp. 3–4).

Legal immigration creates problems of its own, which are only exacerbated by illegal immigration. George J. Borjas notes that the typical new immigrant is not a highly skilled worker, and that most immigrants entering the United States are less skilled workers with little hope of achieving economic parity with native workers. The typical immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 1970 had 11.1 years of schooling, compared with 11.5 for the native worker. By 1990, the typical immigrant had 11.9 years of schooling compared to 13.2 for native workers. The wage differential between immigrants and native workers also widened: the most recent arrivals in 1970 earned 16.6% less than natives, while by 1990 the wage disadvantage stood at 31.7%. One result has been increasing immigrant participation in welfare programs. In 1970, 6.8% of U.S. households were headed by an immigrant and received 6.7% of all cash benefits; by 1990, 8.4% of households were headed by an immigrant and received 13.1% of all cash benefits (Borjas, 1995, pp. 44–46).

Immigrants in different categories—both legal and illegal—have been eligible to receive certain welfare benefits. Legal immigrants are eligible after three to five years of residence, though asylum applicants and refugees are eligible immediately. One concern is that immigrants, both legal and illegal, displace native workers: for every 100 unskilled immigrants who are working, 25 or more unskilled American-born workers are displaced from jobs. The costs of public assistance for the 2.1 million displaced American workers stands at $11.9 billion. Based on the 1990 census, the poverty rate for immigrants is 42.8% higher than for native-born Americans, and on average immigrant households receive 44.2% more public assistance dollars than native households. In terms of cost, legal immigrants account for three-quarters of the total and illegal immigrants the rest (Landes, Blair, & Jacobs, 1995, p. 110).

Immigration harms minorities more than whites, and for this reason minorities tend to give strong support to immigration reform for both legal and illegal immigration—a distinction many minorities do not make. The economic position of earlier-arriving immigrants is harmed by an influx of later-arriving immigrants (Matloff, 1996, pp. 61–62). While noting some benefits of immigration, Matloff (1996) concludes: "But the bottom line is that the significant problems associated with today's high yearly levels of immigration can only be solved by reducing those levels" (p. 71). The first effort to reduce immigration levels should logically be to reduce illegal immigration, which would have an economic benefit for both native-born Americans and legal immigrants. Yet, as Matloff (1996) notes, Congress failed to accomplish this task and in fact increased yearly immigration quotas by 40% in 1990 without solving the problem of illegal immigration (p. 71).

The failure of Congress to address the issue adequately led to efforts by individual states to take action, though immigration policy is a federal rather than a state matter. Proposition 187 in California is a prime example. Appearing on the California ballot in the 1994 election through the initiative process, it was offered as a way of solving a number of the state's ills by requiring that illegal immigrants be refused a variety of government services, such as access to educational programs, welfare, and medical benefits except for emergency medical care. The Nation provided a succinct description of the proposition's scope:

Goodman was campaigning for Proposition 187, the grandiosely titled "Save Our State" ballot initiative that, if passed and validated by the courts, would use strict verification requirements to prevent California's estimated 1.7 million undocumented immigrants from partaking of every form of public welfare, including non-emergency medical care, prenatal clinics, and public schools. The measure would require employees at public health facilities, welfare offices, police departments, and schools to demand proof of legal residency and to report those who cannot produce it to the Immigration and Naturalization Service; it also calls for stiff penalties for creating or using false documents (Kadetsky, 1994, p. 416).

Though the proposition passed, much of it remained unimplemented because of court challenges. Further state actions followed, joined by county and municipal efforts to increase the role of local law enforcement and to institute other controls to the extent possible.