How a 1965 immigration reform created illegal immigration
*Fifty years ago there was no such thing as an “illegal alien.” As much as we dislike the term, it’s an invented idea that came about as a consequence of a law that sought to be more “fair” in the allotment of U.S. entry Visas. VL
By Douglas S. Massey, The Washington Post
It’s hard not to shake your head at one distinctively American aspect of immigration policymaking — how it tends to disregard social and economic dynamics that drive migratory flows and patterns. America’s immigration policy seems to be set in some aspirational abstract, focused on the type of country we want to be, but detached from real-world considerations.
[pullquote]Although little had changed in practical terms in the years after 1965 , now the migrants were “illegal” and hence by definition “lawbreakers” and “criminals.”[/pullquote]Such was the case in 1965 when Congress enacted landmark reforms to our immigration law. Though the act had the noble goals of eliminating racism and prejudice from the U.S. immigration system, it was enacted without a clear understanding of how and why people migrate to the United States from particular countries, or how the anticipated congressional action might affect those patterns.
And so, [tweet_dis]one unintended consequence of the well-intentioned 1965 immigration reform was an unprecedented rise in illegal migration.[/tweet_dis] This in turn set in motion a cycle of border enforcement that produced more, rather than fewer, undocumented migrants living north of the border — not to mention the toxic politics around the issue.
Click HERE to read the full story.
[Photo by U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Flickr]
