1995 Bill Clinton - Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

In 1995, illegal immigration to the United States had reached epidemic proportions, and every day Americans were crying out about lost jobs and increased burdens on taxpayers due to the rise in illegal immigration.  Micheal Lind, a senior editor of the The New Republic wrote in an editorial for the New York Times, that the "United States can no longer be the world's employment agency and welfare service of first resort."   Lind argued that "no legal immigrant has ever displaced an American worker", and called it "sinister racist scapegoating", but he nevertheless conceded that "the harmful effects of legal as well as illegal immigration on low-income American workers are real".   Lind cited the economist Geroge Borjas who calculated that immigration in border cities accounted for a third of the decline in low-skilled jobs, and he predicted that the drag on wages was likely to grow worse.  Lind also pointed out that since 1965, when President Johnson eliminated the quota system based on national origins, the black working poor suffered significantly against competition from Latin Americans and Asians.   As, the debate raged on president Clinton nearing the end of his first term had to respond.   In his 1995, State of the Union address, he told both Congress and the nation that he heard them.   His administration was going to move aggressively to secure the boarder and deport "criminal aliens" faster than ever before.   This was a move that was opposed by many liberals, except for a few courageous liberals like Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas who raised the issue of mass immigration and falling wages.  Representative Jordan was chairwoman of the bipartisan Federal Commission on Immigration Reform, and she called for the limiting of family-reunification immigration to nuclear families only.  Jordan's reforms would eliminate thousands of visas to unskilled foreign workers, requires a national identity card, and cap legal immigration at 550,000.  Reforms, that editoralists like Michael Lind felt did not go far enough, but ones that President Clinton was willing to support.

Here is the excerpt from President Clinton's 1995 State of the Union address:

"Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it."  

On September 30, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed H.R 3610, the 1997 omnibus appropriations bill, it included the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) which strengthened "the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system".   The bill required immigrants illegally in the Untied States for 6 months, but less than one year were to remain outside the United States for three years and gave the Attorney General broad authority to construct a series of barriers or fencing along the the US-Mexico border.  The bill also included two very controversial provisions which made it much easier for federal immigration officers to deport illegal aliens.  First, the law  expanded the number of offenses that could trigger immediate abortion including minor offenses such as shoplifting.   Second the bill required states and municipalities to cooperate with federal authorities regarding the enforcement of immigration laws by regulating how states and local municipalities must share information with federal immigration authorities. Under the new law, states and municipalities were prohibited from establishing laws or practices which would bar the sharing of immigration status of individuals with federal authorities.  It worked like this.  Upon the arrest of an individual for something as simple as shoplifting, the local authorities were required to share the information with federal immigration authorities.  If the federal immigration authorities determined the person to be in illegal immigrant, they could issue an immigration detainer or notice that they intended to take custody of the individual and put them into removal proceedings.   Once a retainer was issued, the local law agency was required to notify the federal immigration authorities 48 hours prior to the release from custody of the individual, allowing immigration authorities to pick up the individual.  

As deportations increased, local communities pushed their politicians to declare them as sanctuary cities and states.  As a sanctuary city, the municipality would declare that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to force a state or local law enforcement agency to comply with IIRIRA laws.   These agencies would refuse to share information with federal immigration authorities for any but the most violent crimes, and required an official warrant before turning over any individual to the federal authorities. 

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=51634
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=52021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/07/opinion/liberals-duck-immigration-debate.html
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/illegal-immigration/seven-amnesties-passed-congress.html
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/sanctuary-cities-and-immigration-detainers-a-primer/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/ICE_Arrest.jpg