For almost 30 years, from 1966 through 1994 no U.S. president addressed the problem of illegal immigration during a State of the Union address, even though the number of illegal immigrants grew from 500,000 to over 5,000,000 during that same time frame. Did they just sweep the problem under the rug? By 1980, the problem widely recognized, and Ronald Reagan had a perfect opportunity to address it in his first State of the Union when he painted a "pretty grim picture" of our nation. Yet, he chose not to mention immigration, and instead comforted us with the words that "there's nothing wrong with our internal strengths".
1965 Hart-Celler Act fundamentally changes U.S. Immigration policy
The 1924 immigration law set quotas for each country set proportional to the population as defined in the 1890 census. In fact, prior to 1965 many Asian nations were excluded from U.S. immigration due to exclusion laws and amendments. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Acts barred the entry of Chinese laborers and in 1907, diplomatic negotiations excluded Japanese laborers. By 1917, Asian immigrants were categorized as ineligible , and in 1924 all immigrants from the "Asia-Pacific Triangle' were banned. Then, in 1934 the Tydings-McDuffie Act granting independence of the Philippines changed the status of Filipinos from nationals to aliens, subjecting them to a very low annual quota. A revised immigration act in 1952 did bring an end to the Asian exclusion acts, but left the annual quota for each nation very low. Because of this, by 1965 only 6 percent of all immigrants to the United States were Asian, while more than half were European. When the 1965 Hart-Celler was passed, it abolished the earlier quota system based on national origin and replaced it with one based upon skills deemed useful to the United States. The law fundamentally transformed immigration and the makeup of the United States. Instead of Europeans dominating the immigration system, the largest share of today's immigration population is from Mexico. From 1965 to 2000, Mexicans make up the the largest share of immigrants at 4.3 million. In fact, the Mexico, India, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, El Salvador, Cuba, South Korea, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala together make up almost 60% of our current immigration population.The 1965 law was largely hailed as an elimination of the racial and national discriminatory practices that had for many years excluded immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe. The 1965 law put in place a cap of 170,000 Visas for the Eastern hemisphere and and 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere. The caps, did not apply to immediate family members. In addition, a cap of 20,000 from a single country was applied to the Eastern hemisphere, but not the Western. Without a single-country cap in the Western hemisphere, and no cap on family members, Mexican immigration quickly rose from 300,000 in the 1950s to over 450,000 in the 1960s. Yet, one issue remained. The demand for migrant workers from Mexico, and the desire to immigrate to the United States from Mexico still greatly outpaced the immigration policies. A primary reason for this, is that in 1965 the Bracero program was terminated. The Bracero program allowed an average of 200,000 Mexicans to come to the United States as manual laborers on U.S. farms from 1942 to 1965. In 1956 alone, over 450,000 wokers migrated temporarily to the United States.
Illegal Immigration
Because demand outpaced the restrictions put in place, the Hart-Celler law actually further restricted the number of Mexicans who could find work each year legally in the United States, and inadvertently laid the foundation for a steep rise in illegal immigration beginning in the 1970s. The rise in illegal immigration became a serious issue by 1974, when the commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) publicly stated that “the United States is being overrun by illegal aliens”. In 1974 alone, INS apprehended 788,000 illegal aliens and estimated that the number of illegal aliens currently in the United States was somewhere between 7 and 12 million people. Officially, in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office the number of illegal aliens was estimated to be just over 3 million and continuing to rise. Immigration reform was to be one of President Reagan's lasting impressions, yet he was surprisingly quiet on the issue in his first State of the Union address. Actually, he was quite all 8 years, as were all presidents from 1966 until 1995. In almost 30 years, not one president considered the issue of illegal immigration to be important enough to get even a brief mention during the State of the Union Address. It wasn't until 1995, when President Clinton addressed the issue and the impact it was having on U.S. jobs.President Reagan could have easily slipped in illegal immigration when he talked about 8 million Americans being out of work. He could have talked about it when he described the American worker seeing a 5 percent decline in his hourly earnings since 1975. He could have discussed the cost of illegal immigration when suggesting that the national debt was approaching $1 trillion. President Reagan opened his first State of the Union Address by paining a "pretty grim picture", one that was "within our power to change". But no, just like Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush after him, President Reagan did not discuss the impact of illegal immigration on the State of the Union. Instead he just said, "there's nothing wrong with our internal strengths". In other words, all that was needed was confidence that a new economic plan would fix everything.
"Now, I've painted a pretty grim picture, but I think I've painted it accurately. It is within our power to change this picture, and we can act with hope. There's nothing wrong with our internal strengths. There has been no breakdown of the human, technological, and natural resources upon which the economy is built."In 1981, Ronald Reagan laid out 8 principles that he believed should guide all efforts to immigration reform. Included among these was a promise of legalization of illegal immigrants who have become productive citizens in this country.
"Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status. At the same time, in so doing, we must not encourage illegal immigration."
This is not to say, that Reagan didn't have a plan to fix the illegal immigration problem. In fact, President Regan and his Attorney General were planning a legislative package based upon 8 principles including amnesty for "Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status". In President Reagan's second term, he signed a sweeping immigration act known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act that among other things granted amnesty to aliens who could show that they entered the United States before January 1st, 1982. The bill was named after Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Congressman Romano Mazzoli from Kentucky. President Reagan described it as a non-partisan effort to overhaul our immigration system as evidenced by Simpson, a Republican and Mazzoli a Democrat. In his statement on the signing, President Reagan called it "the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952". The bill included employer sanctions to "remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw illegal aliens here", increased enforcement of immigration laws, and a "legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America". According to President Reagan, "Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans"
Under the 1986 Act, about 2.7 million illegal aliens were granted amnesty, and in the years following six more amnesty programs granted amnesty to an additional 2.3 million illegal aliens. Most notable of these were one million illegal aliens under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act of 1997 and the rolling amnesty programs of 1994 and 2000 which granted amnesty to well over one million additional illegal aliens. Reagan's lasting impression on illegal immigration would thus become amnesty, and illegal immigration would continue to grow until it reached over 11 million by 2013.
View Reagan signing the 1986 act here
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43425
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44128
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-79/pdf/STATUTE-79-Pg911.pdf
http://www.history.com/topics/us-immigration-since-1965
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-72
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/135/
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=36699
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/illegal-immigration/seven-amnesties-passed-congress.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Border_USA_Mexico.jpg
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