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.

The Socioeconomic Impact of Illegal Immigration

The impact of illegal immigration into the United States has long been a point of contention, with some citing the benefits brought by immigration in general and others arguing that illegal immigrants in particular are at least an economic drain on the country. Critics raise the question of whether undocumented residents of the United States receive more in publicly provided education, health care, and other social services than they contribute in taxes—specifically in sales taxes, since they usually do not pay income taxes. Rothman and Espenshade (1992) studied this question and found that the fiscal costs of immigrants fall most heavily on state and local governments, while at the federal level there is almost no evidence that immigrants impose net burdens on other taxpayers. National estimates tend to aggregate influences across federal, state, and local levels, suggesting that at the federal level alone, immigrants provide a fiscal surplus. Few studies before 1992 explicitly considered the fiscal impacts of undocumented migrants: North and Houston (1976) found no adverse net fiscal effects at the national level, while Weintraub and Cardenas (1984) determined that unauthorized migrants provide large fiscal benefits to the state of Texas because of their low use of public services and high tax payments. Undocumented migrants were estimated to use more services than they paid in taxes at the county level in southern California in two studies (Community Research Associates, 1980; Los Angeles County, 1991).

Later research tended to support these mixed findings. Huddle (1993) examined both legal and illegal immigrants arriving since 1970, estimating their net annual cost to taxpayers at all levels of government at about $43 billion. Passel (1994) argued that Huddle grossly underestimated the amount of taxes that immigrants pay; adjusting Huddle's calculations, Passel estimated that immigrants incur no overall fiscal deficit and instead produce a $25–30 billion annual budget surplus. Los Angeles County's Internal Services Department estimated in 1992 that the net county fiscal cost of undocumented individuals was roughly $440 per person (Moreno-Evans, 1992). Estimates for San Diego include both county and state data, showing that net fiscal costs in 1992 were approximately $730 per capita, including education, public health, criminal justice, and social service delivery (Auditor General of California, 1992). These costs increased to $1,110 per capita in 1993 by adding expenses associated with transportation, employment training, developmental services, and police protection (Rea & Parker, 1993). Clark, Passel, and Zimmerman (1994) estimated revenues and expenditures associated with undocumented immigrants in the seven states with the largest such populations and made estimates for incarceration and public education costs alongside revenues from state, sales, and property taxes. It remains impossible, however, to draw definitive conclusions about the net fiscal impacts of undocumented migrants because not all revenue and expenditure items are included in any single study.

The demographic data on the immigrant population suggests an economic impact on portions of the native U.S. workforce. Mexican immigration in the 1990s increased the supply of unskilled labor and thereby reduced the wages of workers with a high school education by about 5%. The reduction in wages for unskilled workers reduced prices for consumers by only about 0.08% to 2%—a modest impact because unskilled labor accounts for only a small fraction of total economic output. As Camarota (2001) notes:

Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled, and it is hard to make an economic argument for unskilled immigration, because it tends to reduce wages for workers who are already the lowest paid and whose real wages actually declined in the 1990s. Moreover, this cheap labor comes with a high cost. Because the modern American economy offers very limited opportunities for workers with little education, continued unskilled immigration cannot help but significantly increase the size of the poor and uninsured populations, as well as the number of people using welfare (para. 7).

Because Mexican immigrants earn less on average, they make lower tax payments and make heavier use of means-tested programs. According to the National Academy of Sciences, the average adult Mexican immigrant has a lifetime fiscal impact of negative $55,200.

Statistics show that while Mexican immigrants make up 4.2% of the total population, they and their U.S.-born children under 18 account for 10.2% of all persons in poverty and 12.5% of those without health insurance. Even among Mexican immigrant families who have lived in the United States for more than 20 years—virtually all of whom are legal residents—more than half live in or near poverty and one-third are uninsured. The push for welfare reform in the late 1990s was directed in part at limiting access for the immigrant population, legal and illegal; and even so, an estimated 34% of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants and 25% headed by illegal Mexican immigrants used at least one major welfare program, compared to 15% of native households. Mexican immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, still have double the welfare use rate of native-born Americans (Camarota, 2001, para. 10).

Another aspect of the impact of immigration is addressed by Brimelow (1998), who argues that immigration should be restricted because many people hold a particular vision of a strong and viable nation-state. In the past, it was believed that the influx of immigrants was simply too small to make much of an impact, but Brimelow contends that this situation changed with the 1965 Immigration Act, after which immigration increased rapidly. One result has been that the ethnic mix in America has shifted from a white majority to a different demographic composition. Brimelow also states that more of these immigrants are making use of the welfare system and face higher poverty rates—concerns he raises as threats to both the economy and the social order.

One of Brimelow's central concerns is the fear that allowing too many people from another part of the world into this country endangers the idea of a nation-state, defined as "a sovereign structure that is the political expression of a specific ethno-cultural group" (Brimelow, 1998, p. 221). The notion seems to be that as a creation of a specific ethno-cultural group, the nation-state must be protected from dilution by others. Of course, in the case of the United States, the entire nation-state was created by immigrants from Europe and elsewhere in the first place, and people who immigrate bring something they add to the cultural mix even as they seek to adapt to the society they join.

A report by the Commission on Immigration Reform addresses who should be an American and how that person should go about becoming one. The report includes a section titled "Americanization," noting that the United States stands as one of the most successful multiethnic nations in history. The report observes that while the economic integration of immigrants generates little controversy, the ongoing debate in the United States is largely a cultural one, dealing with issues such as affirmative action and multiculturalism—a debate occurring not between immigrants and the native-born, but across the mainstream of American opinion. The Commission recommends not halting immigration but speeding up the naturalization process, thereby making it easier to become an American:

This is a recognition of the contribution of immigrants, of the falseness of the myths cited by Lacey, and of the fact that what makes an American is a belief in certain principles and the willingness to work to make those principles prevail in the world ("Americanization" in Report of the Commission on Immigration Reform, 1997, p. 10).

Our fear of uncontrolled immigration has a firmer basis, while our fear of immigration in general involves a failure to recognize what immigrants bring in terms of skills and ideas to a country that is supposed to value innovation.

Bratsberg (1995) noted the degree of growth in both legal and illegal immigration and the impact it was having on society. Measuring the size of the illegal immigrant population has long been difficult, given that the actual number of undocumented individuals is unknown. As Bratsberg writes, empirical studies of population growth concluded that the net population increase due to illegal immigration ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 per year between 1980 and 1986, and that despite the intent of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, there was no indication that the yearly flow of illegal immigrants decreased following the act's passage (Bratsberg, 1995). This study also found agreement with Chiswick (1988) that illegal immigration is more elastic with respect to migration cost than legal immigration.

Espenshade (1995) also notes problems in studying illegal immigration and cites how reality may differ from public perception:

Not the least of the obstacles is the fact that the number of unauthorized immigrants entering the United States is unobserved and therefore not precisely known. In addition, no census or other federally sponsored survey asks respondents about their legal status, so the impact of undocumented immigration is often inferred from other indicators. The public's impression about unauthorized migration is frequently formed from scenes of Cubans and Haitians intercepted on the high seas or from pictures of clandestine migrants crossing the Mexico–United States border. As a consequence, the public perception about the nature and consequences of illegal immigration may differ substantially from what the research literature suggests (Espenshade, 1995, p. 195).

Some studies use apprehension data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service as a proxy for the number of illegal immigrants coming to the United States, but Espenshade notes how inappropriate this is, since this data measures undocumented aliens who fail to enter the U.S., while the real issue is to count those who have succeeded.

Espenshade further notes how concerns about illegal aliens prompted legislative responses as far back as 1888 and 1891, when bills were passed allowing workers and other aliens who had entered illegally to be deported. It was clear by 1904 that the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was failing, after which the Commissioner-General of Immigration assigned mounted inspectors to patrol the Mexico–U.S. border to prevent the smuggling of Chinese laborers through Mexico (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 1989). Quantitative restrictions on immigration were introduced in the 1920s but only served to increase illegal immigration, leading to the creation in 1924 of the U.S. Border Patrol as the uniformed enforcement arm of the INS.

The bracero program was introduced in the 1940s to bring in migrant farmworkers but did little to stem the flow of illegal farmworkers. Pressure for reform increased into the 1950s, leading to the passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which imposed penalties including fines and possible imprisonment for persons found guilty of "harboring" illegal aliens. The law also made a concession to Texas agricultural interests, exempting employers of illegal aliens from these penalties. In 1965, amendments were made to the law that barely addressed the question of illegal immigration.

Estimates of the illegal immigrant population have varied widely. Some researchers have estimated that the total number of undocumented migrants resident in the United States might exceed 10 million (Keely, 1982; Bos, 1984). More refined research by Warren and Passel (1987) placed the number of undocumented immigrants counted in the 1980 U.S. census at about 2.1 million, with more than half (1.1 million) from Mexico. Informal estimates suggest that between one-half and two-thirds of illegal aliens were included in the 1980 census, implying that the total number of undocumented persons in the country in 1980 stood between 2.5 and 3.5 million (Fix & Passel, 1994).

By 1986, an estimated 3 to 5 million unauthorized aliens were living in the United States. The numbers dropped dramatically after IRCA's legalization program granted amnesty to roughly 2.8 million formerly illegal residents; estimates for 1989 placed the undocumented population at between 1.8 and 3 million (Fix & Passel, 1994). This amnesty was a one-time opportunity, however, and the number of illegal residents then began to rise again. Warren (1994) put the total undocumented population in October 1992 at 3.4 million. Individuals who entered on legal temporary visas and later became unauthorized because they overstayed their visa constitute roughly half the undocumented population; the other half entered without proper documents, usually crossing U.S. land borders between official ports of entry. Mexico is the leading source country, accounting for approximately 1.3 million or about 40% of the total. California is the leading state of residence, with 1.4 million illegal residents; California and six other states—New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and Arizona—account for 86% of the total illegal population. Fernandez and Robinson (1994) estimated the total undocumented population in that year at between 3.5 and 4.0 million.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (2006), an average of more than 1.3 million immigrants—legal and illegal—arrived in the United States each year in the 1990s, and between January 2000 and March 2002, another 3.3 million settled here. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, illegal immigration will, in less than fifty years, increase the total U.S. population from 288 million to more than 400 million. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is currently approximately 33.1 million, or 11.5% of the total, and it is estimated that 8 to 9 million are illegal immigrants.

Camarota (2001) gives particular attention to the immigrant population from Mexico, finding that the size of the influx has grown substantially. He states that "two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in ten natives. Mexican immigrants now account for 22% of all high school dropouts in the labor force" (para. 3). Despite this, the more than ten million native-born Americans who lack a high school diploma face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants.

Conclusion

Illegal immigration has gained national urgency since the attacks of September 11, 2001, as it emerged that the hijackers were in the country illegally—either because they had always been undocumented or because their student visas had expired. Tightening the borders gained in importance as a result and continues to be cited by political leaders, business people, and others. New efforts have been undertaken by private citizens' groups to patrol parts of the border and turn over individuals attempting to enter illegally to the authorities. Impetus has grown for more drastic measures, such as building a wall between the United States and Mexico, though critics point out how such a measure would fail in its intended goal.

The response of the criminal justice system has been evolving for decades on this issue. Currently, that response tends to focus first on enforcing existing laws; second, on determining whether new enforcement mechanisms will be permitted—such as allowing or requiring local police to enforce federal immigration law; and third, on developing new laws to address perceived threats and failures in the system. Stronger measures are certain to follow, though their precise form remains to be seen. What remains clear is that a comprehensive and coherent national immigration policy—one that balances border security, civil liberties, economic realities, and the contributions immigrants make to American society—has yet to be achieved.