1986 Immigration Reform

One of the largest immigration reforms was in 1986, was trying to solve all the problems with immigration in one stroke of the pen by Ronald Reagan. Unsurprisingly this bill did not work as well as it was advertised, as we are still having these problems today. An article from The Washington Post points as reform to be one of the problems that there are 11.1 million illegal immigrants in the country today, while there were only 5 million back in 1986 when this reform was signed.

One of the largest parts of this reform was the amnesty that it granted to unauthorized immigrants, giving them eligibility for a temporary legal status if they have already been living in the United States. There were a few requirements where they would have to pay a 185 dollar fee, demonstrate "good moral character", and after 18 months of doing so they would be eligible for green cards.

This reform also wanted to target the United States - Mexico border to make sure that there would be less illegal crossings. The only way that this bill tried to stop this was with surveillance and a larger guard that would patrolling that area.

The amnesty was a huge part of this reform, trying to incorporate people back into the society that they have been living around for years. This gave out 2.7 million green cards to immigrants and 1 million of them were farm workers. But this was not everyone that was undocumented, some people did not arrive in the United States before 1982, and other simply did not know about this reform because of bad outreach.

The problem with this bill was that it did not understand the demand for immigrant labor, and The Washington Post says, "Congress didn't foresee at the time that employers would want more immigrants in the years ahead", proving that some legal immigrants would have a difficult time to get into the labor markets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/30/in-1986-congress-tried-to-solve-immigration-why-didnt-it-work/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.271c47534c62