POS 357 Final
What is Operation Wetback and who was President when it was proposed?
(1954, Eisenhower) a military style campaign to sieze and deport illegal Mexican immigrants; more that 1 million Mexicans were deported but legal Bracero admissions doubled afterwards
What impact did FAIR have?
A small minority of lawmakers tried to pass restrictionist reform with the support of FAIR and other restrictionist groups to crackdown on illegal immigration, and reduce admittances to 300,000 yearly but they had very little support in congress
What does DREAM stand for?
Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors
Who introduced the DREAM Act and when?
Dick Durbin (D-IL) and L\Orin Hatch (R-UT) in 2001
What were the findings of the Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Immigration?
There are few reliable estimates concerning the actual size of illegal immigration, but that it should be discouraged
2012 Presidential Election-Romney
advocated a fence over the entire length of the Mexican border; supports E-verify; advocates a pathway to citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants with a preference for doing so through military service; supported AZ SB1070; wanted to make legal immigration more expansive
Effectiveness of Employer Sanctions
all employees hired after November 6, 1986 must present documents verifying work eligibility (US passports, permanent resident card (green card), driver's license, social security card); huge underground industry emerges that provides illegal aliens with fake documents in both Mexico and the US; both Reagan and Bush are unenthusiastic about enforcing employer sanctions; unfairly burden small businesses; potentially discriminate against documented immigrants and foreign citizens
What does AFL stand for and when was it created?
American Federation of Labor; 1886
When did Mexican immigration become a problem?
1970s
When did the US withdraw troops from Vietnam?
1973
When did Siagon fall to North Vietnam?
1975
Mariel Harbor
1980, Castro allows anyone who wishes to leave Cuba to do so as long as they had transportation; 125,000 Cuban refugees arrived in Florida, a small minority of which were criminals released from Cuban prisons; Carter's administration struggled to respond; some were granted immediate asylum and others were processed at military camps throughout the US
Describe immigration policy in the 1980s. Would this period be described as restrictive or expansive? How would Tichenor describe the period? Be sure to give detailed responses to these questions
1980s were a period of expansive immigration reform that divides congress and occurs during the economic recession; the American public supports a crackdown on immigration and expansive immigration policy seems unthinkable; legal inflows of immigrants nearly reach the levels of the early 20th century; the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act establishes employer sanctions and gives more resources to the INS; employer sanctions aren't effective because there is no reliable system for IDing employees and administration of the sanctions is weak so there is little to no impact of illegal immigration; the Act grants seasonal laborers a path to citizenship and gives antidiscrimination rights to aliens; 3 million undocumented workers receive legal status; see the 1980 Refugee Act above; Ticehnor: Why do we get expansive immigration policy when most Americans clearly supported restrictive immigration policy? ideological convergence of both liberal and conservative politicians and interest groups in favor of immigration; pro-immigration expertise in national commissions and governing bodies; global trade competition and foreign policy commitments; mobilization of pro-immigration ethnic groups due to republican efforts to restrict immigration
Congress and Immigration in the 1980s
1983 reintroduction of legislation based on the recommendations of SCIRP which again passes in the Senate but has trouble passing in the House; agricultural committee, education and labor committees and energy and commerce committees claim jurisdiction over the matter; 1984 passes immigration reform bill
Displaced Persons Act of 1948
20-30 million people were displaced from all over Europe; the Fellows Bill becomes the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and admits 202,000 displaced persons; future quotas were to be reduced but terms were still discriminatory against Jews; anyone who had fled to ally-controlled territory after 1945 were excluded; nativists no longer speak openly of racial inferiority, but it was clear they were specifically targeting Jews; Truman signs the Act but is unhappy with it
Refugee Relief Act of 1953
209,000 visas were given to European refugees not based on the quota system under the request of Eisenhower
2000 Presidential Election
7.7 million Hispanics registered to vote (up from 6.6 million in 1996); Al Gore receives 62% of the Hispanic vote and George W. Bush receives 35%
Who opposed Jimmy Carter's plan to combat illegal immigration?
Agricultural growers and Latino interest groups
What was the "Great Society"?
An idea by Lyndon B. Johnson that proposed a massive expansion of social welfare in the US
Who supported many of the provisions of the Immigration Reform Act of 2007 nd voted for it?
Barack Obama
Who supports the guest worker program because it is a pathway to citizenship that isn't amnesty and wants illegal immigrants to pay a fine, learn English and move to the back of the paper processing line behind those who went about immigration legally?
Barack Obama
Who wanted a system for employers to verify employee eligibility , increased and more effective employer sanctions, and allowance for undocumented aliens to access driver's licenses?
Barack Obama
Who endorses the findings of the Jordan Commission as president?
Bill Clinton
Who proposed that Cuban refugees intercepted at sea should no longer be granted admittance into the US?
Bill Clinton
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
Bush administration wants to return to the issues of the CIR from 2004; revisits the issue of the guest worker program; Bush wants to make immigration reform top of legislation agenda; investments in border enforcement, expedited deportation, and online verification of employee status; introduced to the Senate to include the creation of the Z visa (given to everyone living w out a valid visa prior to 2010, legal right to remain in the US, given a social security number, eligible for a green card after 8 years and a $2000 fine on top of paying back taxes, can be naturalized after 5 years of having a green card, limits family reunification to only children and spouses); creation of the Y visa (temporary workers can stay for 2 years then must return home); border enforcement (20,000 additional agents sent to the Mexican border, 370 miles of fencing added, all employers would have to keep immigration status of employees up to date in a central national database); included the DREAM Act; republicans didn't like the path to citizenship revisions because they believed it rewarded immigrants for violating immigration laws; democrats don't like provisions limiting family reunification; labor unions and human rights groups don't like temporary guest worker program because it undercuts labor's negotiating position and workers would have a strong incentive to overstay their two year visas; measure fails to get through the Senate; Bush expresses deep dissatisfaction with congress
Latino interest groups eventually persuaded who to oppose employer sanctions because they would expose legal Hispanic immigrants to discrimination too?
Cesar Chavez and LULAC
1996 Presidential Election
Clinton defeats Bob Dole for a second term; Dole had heavily allied himself with restrictive policies toward illegal immigrants and supported denying education benefits to children of undocumented immigrants; realization that immigrants were the fasted growing voting block; democrats were the primary beneficiaries of that growth even though Latinos tended to agree with republican ideas, they vote for the pro-immigration; one million immigrants become naturalized that year
Who threatens to veto the IIRIRA and why?
Clinton; if the provisions restricting education weren't removed (but they were so he signed in Sept. 1995)
Jordan Commission
Commission of Immigration Reform (CIR) was created during the Immigration Act of 1990 and headed by Barbara Jordan; advocated making employer sanctions more effective; computerized registry verifying worker eligibility with data from the social security administration and the INS; still endorses large scale admissions but with modest cuts in the annual visa numbers; wants elimination of preference for extended family members
What does CIO stand for and when was it created?
Congress of Industrial Organizations; 1935
Democrats and Immigration in the 1950's
Democrats realign themselves as the party of immigration; reaffirms commitment to immigration that had been abandoned during the Progressive Era; do not distinguish between new and old immigration; advocates expansion of immigration opportunities to all who want to come to the US regardless of national origin or race; takes majority of the House and pushes policy changes in civil rights, education, medical care, social welfare and immigration control (expansion); they were unable to push immigration reform because Southern Democrats weren't as eager about it as Northern democrats
Who admitted 30,000 Hungarian refugees under the 1956 Hungarian Refugee policy and set an important precedent allowing the president to extend asylum to thousands of refugees at a time?
Dwight Eisenhower
Who believed that national origins quotas were counterproductive because they make it difficult to admit E. European refugees who are trying to escape communist rule?
Dwight Eisenhower
Who often took executive action on matters of immigration?
Dwight Eisenhower
Who required that Congress develops emergency legislation for refugees from E. Europe?
Dwight Eisenhower
What does FAIR stand for?
Federation for American Immigration Reform
Who believed that his relations with mexico would be his foreign policy legacy?
George W. Bush
Who encouraged family reunification and suggested that relatives of citizens or permanent residents couldreside with their family members in the US while their papers were being processed?
George W. Bush
Who had a pro-immigration record while he was the governor of TX?
George W. Bush
Who increased budgets to decrease immigration application processing time from 3 years to 6 months?
George W. Bush
Who praised the family values and work ethic of the Latino population?
George W. Bush
Who rejected efforts to recreate Prop 187 (education for immigrant children) in his home state as governor?
George W. Bush
Who wants to reinitiate the guest worker program, increase immigration controls, concentrate forces at the border instead of trying to catch immigrants who are already in the US and create a waiting period for citizenship?
George W. Bush
Who proposed dividing the INS into two agencies and what did he hope to divide them into?
George W. Bush; one agency to control the borer and the other to develop a "friendlier" process for naturalization
Who's administration admits more that 130,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos?
Gerald Ford
Who created the Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Immigration and when?
Gerald Ford; 1975
Which president tied refugee relief to the Cold War in order to gain acceptance from citizens and to convince them that the US needed to save those fleeing communism?
Harry S. Truman
Who issued an executive order in December of 1945 that directed the State Department to issue 40,000 visas to primarily Jewish reefugees?
Harry S. Truman
Who's administration tried to apply ammendments to the McCarron-Walter Act of 1952 about employers knowingly hiring illegal immigrants as workers? Were they successful?
Harry S. Truman; no
Why was JFK slow to push immigration reform?
He was wary of alienating anti-immigration Democrats in Congress and public opinion polls suggested that most Americans were still anti-immigration.
Which organization comes under public scrutiny because of a strong perception that they hadn't made a sincere effort to enforce immigration law?
INS
What does the IIRIRA stand for and what does it state?
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act; a transformed version of the Smith Act that targets undocumented immigrants, visa violators and criminal aliens and includes provisions that deny public education to children of undocumented immigrants, enhances the ability of the government to guard national borders, tightens asylum procedures and limits immigrants access to public benefits, and requires newcomers to have financial sponsors in the US
What does INS stand for?
Immigration and Naturalization Service
Describe immigration policy in the 1950s and 1960s. Would this period be described as restrictive or expansive? How would Tichenor describe the period? Be sure to give detailed responses to these questions
Increasing expansion of immigration opportunities; defeat of fascism (dictatorship in Europe) has a profound impact on American ideology; ideas of racial hierarchy are no longer taken seriously as a science and people begin to retreat from them; new immigration commissions challenge findings of the Dillingham Commission and other pseudoscientific studies; labor changes its traditional anti-immigration stance due to changing demographics of union membership; labor and civil rights groups form an alliance; labor dislikes the ideas of conservatives who promoted quotas while allowing Mexican guest workers; there are still powerful influences in society that favor restrictive immigration; most American citizens oppose expansion; congress doesn't promote immigration reform; nativist elements hold heavy influence over the expansion of committee staff and legislative experts
The immigration of which group was generally praised by Congress so much that they were offered expedited legal residency, resettlement, languange assistance, vocational assistance and medical care? And were welcomed by the American public, ethnic groups, civil rights groups, religious groups, organized labor, liberal politicians and African American communities?
Indochinese
Who advances a plan to combat illegal immigration in 1977 by impending a fine and criminal prosecution for employers knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, requiring social security numbers for employment, increasing patrol of the Mexican border, allowing amnesty for all undocumented immigrants living in the US before 1970?
Jimmy Carter
Who promised to use his executive power to push leadership during the Cold War and include immigration policy?
John F. Kennedy
Who proposed that national origins quotas should be phased out over 5 years and that 50% of visas should go to family members of US citizens and permanent residents while the other 50% should be reserved for individuals with occupational skills or who are pursuing education?
John F. Kennedy
Who, in their 1960 Democratic platform, promises the removal of national origins quotas, the end of the Bracero Program and the linking of immigration to civil rights?
John F. Kennedy
Freedom Flight Program
Johnson allows Cubans fleeing Castro into the US; Congress follows this program with the Cuban Adjustments Act of 1966; Cubans are treated as refugees and can settle; hundreds of thousands of Cubans are admitted; quickly admitted and are legal permanent residents after 1 year
What does LULAC stand for and how does the group feel about illegal immigration?
League of United Latin American Citizens; views illegal immigration as an obsticle to Latin American integration into US culture and wants political rights and cultural assimilation
Who is appointed by Nixon as head of the INS and what does he request?
Leonard Chapman (former Marine); requests a large budget increase to man the Mexican border
Who fought for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Great Society?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Who won the Presidential election in 1964 with a huge victory by evoking the memory of JFK?
Lyndon B. Johnson
What does MALDEF stand for and what does the group do?
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; modeled after the NAACP designed to fight for legal protections of Mexican Americans and lobbies congress on behalf of undocumented immigrants
2012 Presidential Election-Obama
Obama highlighted his work against illegal immigration from his last term (doubling of patrol agents on the Mexican border, additional fencing along the border with Mexico, increased deportations of undocumented immigrants with criminal records, annual deportations of 400,000 undocumented immigrants and advocating the mandatory use of E-verify0; supported the DREAM Act; supports path to legalization; in June 2012 it was announced that the Obama administration will not seek deportation of young people if they arrived to the US before the age of 16 and are under the age of 30; offers renewable 2 year work permits indefinitely which goes into effect in 2015; received 71% of the Hispanic vote and 77% of the Asian American vote
What is the Z visa?
Part of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act; given to everyone without a valid visa prior to 2010- gives the holder the legal right to remain in the US, a social security number, the eligibility of a green card after 8 years and a $2000 fine on top of paying back taxes, and a limit on family reunification to children and spouses
Presidents and Immigration Post-War
Presidents were much more likely to weigh in on the immigration debate during the Cold War; in the past they may have issued vetoes, but now they are actively trying to shape policy
Who permits betwen 40,000 and 60,000 Czechs to remain in the US after the Soviet Union invades Prague in 1968 but gives less support to persecuted Russian Jews?
Richard Nixon
Who's administration strongly supprots the Freedom Flight Program?
Richard Nixon
Which president was from CA and therefore had close ties to agriculture and believed that the US and Mexico should have an open border based on free market principles?
Ronald Reagan
While campaigning in 1980, who endorsed the North American Free Trade Zone with the unregulated movement of goods, services, technology and workers?
Ronald Reagan
Who granted asylum to refugees from Nicaragua, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, E. Europe and Southeast Asia and was much less likely to grant asylum to those who were not fleeing from communism?
Ronald Reagan
Who had the desire to decrease the role of the government in the county, sought to minimize amnesty grants created by the IRCA, welcomed immigrants as a source of cheap labor, but was uninterestsed in expanding civil rights?
Ronald Reagan
AFL-CIO
The CIO was pro-immigration and developed from the AFL due to disagreements over the best way to organize workers; the CIO was much more ethnically diverse and the immigrants that make up the group tend to dislike quotas; the organizations merge in the 1950s; the CIO has a liberalized effect of the AFL; the new president of the AFL has pro-immigration preferences and the AFL-CIO subsequently becomes a supporter of expanded immigration opportunities into the US; restrictionists lost their key allies in maintaining anti-immigration policies
1956 Hungarian Refugees
a pro-immigration policy of Eisenhower's; protests against communist rule; Hungary tries to initiate a multiparty electoral system without Soviet authorization; suppressed the Soviet invasion of Hungary which created 200,000 Hungarian refugees that the quota system wouldn't allow into the US; Eisenhower uses his executive power to admit 30,000 Hungarian refugees which sets an important precedent allowing the President to extend asylum to thousands of refugees at a time
International Security Act of 1950
a restrictive Act that was a result of the Cold War and stated that immigrants are vectors of communism
9/11 and Immigration
attacks were perpetuated by individuals holding visitor and student visas; immediate attention drawn to the immigration and border control policies that allowed the attacks to happen; changes Bush's stance on immigration; major push for dramatic institutional reform; major focus on increasing the security and public safety of citizens residing within the US; broadened authority to detain and deport immigrants; the Office of Homeland Security was formed to secure the US from terrorism and coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement; Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) folded into the Homeland Security Office then disbanded and turned into three new agencies, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996
bars on noncitizens from a broad set of federal benefits including temporary assistance for needy families, Medicaid, food stamps; Clinton supports the bill as part of his broader desire to reform welfare
Tea Party
coalition of conservative activists that formally organized in 2009; strongly reflect restrictionist points of view and identify as republicans; label immigration reform as amnesty
Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Immigration
created by Gerald Ford in 1975; looked at employer sanctions rather than respond to Chapman's budget request; the final report of the committee suggests that there are few reliable estimates concerning the actual size of illegal immigration but suggests that illegal immigration should be discouraged; advocates employer sanctions; placates elements in the government that don't want to expand the federal budget for the INS; no recommendations on how to deal with illegal immigrants that are already living in the US
Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP)
created by the Democrats in the late 1970s to try and delay immigration reform efforts; plays an important role in immigration policy during the 1980s; promise was that the commission would offer unbiased and prudent policy recommendations for illegal immigrants; members and staff were highly committed to racial nondiscrimination and civil rights; racial minorities held prominent positions in the commission; thoroughly examined findings of social scientists and immigration specialists; sponsored its own research; 12 public hearings were held throughout the US
Displaced Persons Act of 1950
realization that the 1945 deadline also excluded many refugees from communist countries; moves the deadline back to 1949; 400,000 refugees end up gaining admittance into the US
Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons
designed to look into refugee relief from Europe
1980 Refugee Act
drastic increase in refugee admittance; increased annual refugee admittance of 50,000 with the allowance of the president to exceed these numbers in the case of an emergency; refugees no longer count against the annual immigration quota ceiling; refugees can become legal permanent residents after a one year probationary period; definition of a refugee: anyone who is outside of their own country and is unwilling or unable to return to their home country because of racial, religious, national, social or political persecution; Act was barely passed by congress; republicans were upset by welfare provisions for refugees; the Act was highly expansionist despite popular opposition; some provisions were made for individuals who made it to the US and asked for asylum; admittance was granted at the discretion of the attorney general
Employer Sanctions
employer sanctions for hiring undocumented workers are very appealing to liberal democrats and labor groups; punish employers who are exploiting labor rather than deporting masses of immigrant laborers; deportation campaigns often result in civil rights abuses of Latino citizens and permanent residents; punishing employers would remove incentive for illegal immigration; legislation for employer sanctions was introduced in 1972 and 1973; passes easily in the House with bipartisan support
1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act
employers are made responsible for ensuring that employees are legal to work; illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers; all undocumented workers who had entered the US before January 1, 1982 were legalized and qualified for legal permanent residence and citizenship; 3 million undocumented aliens benefited
New Restrictionist Movement
environmental and population control groups mobilize against immigration policy; commission on population growth and the American future was established by Nixon in 1969 and concluded that immigration is important and a growing source of population growth but believes that population growth will eventually threaten the sustainability of American life; 1976 congress amends western hemisphere quotas to limit 20,000 immigrants into the country which was aimed at Mexicans; the economic recession increases anti-immigration sentiment and congressmen increasingly advocate an immigration limit; by the end of the 1970s most Americans support restrictions of both legal and illegal immigration
Democrats and Immigration in the Late 1970s
ethnic and civil rights groups are key constituents to the democratic party; don't want to push employer sanctions desired by labor because it risks alienating civil rights groups; tactic is to stall anti-immigration efforts for reform
Interest Groups Supporting Immigration Reform
ethnic/ religious groups; organized labor; business; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Proposition 187
exclude undocumented immigrants from social services including education; designed to deny illegal immigrants welfare, nonemergency healthcare and public education; CA republican governor, Pete Wilson, supports it and claims that CA spends 4.8 billion on welfare, health, education and criminal justice costs
Committee of Postwar Immigration Policy
fears that Congress is generally anti-immigration; fears that competition for jobs from returning soldiers would generally enhance anti-immigration; resolves to form close ties with the Executive branch to attempt to block the legislature from completely closing immigration; formed committee of leading scholars and experts to examine the positive and negative impacts of immigration
National Committee on Immigration Policy
had the idea that refugee relief would be easier to accomplish if separated from more general immigration reform
War Refugees Relief/ Truman
immediate post-war circumstances highlighted a great need to immigration reform; Jewish groups were especially impacted and the scale of the Holocaust became apparent; pro-immigration groups begin lobbying Truman because they realize that effective action probably won't come from Congress; his actions were generally unpopular and he was attacked by Congress for surpassing their authority; only 5% on American citizens polled favored increased immigration; Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons was designed to look at refugee relief from Europe; National Committee on Immigration Policy had the idea that refugee relief would be easier to accomplish if separated from more general immigration reform; Truman tied refugee relief to the Cold War in order to gain acceptance from citizens and to convince them that the US needed to save those fleeing communism
Welfare and Citizenship
immigrants don't have incentive to become legal becaues they're recieving welfare; legislation was introduced in the 1990s
Presidential Commission on Immigration and Naturalization
intended to debunk the Dillingham Commission; suggests no difference between old and new immigrants; restrictionists try to paint it as full of communist sympathizers; the Supreme Court does little
Results of 1990s Immigration Reform
large scale legal immigration into the US; immigrants would get fewer benefits until such time that they formally became citizens; increasing government attention to popular anti-immigration attitudes directed at illegal immigrants and cutting immigration welfare rights
Arizona v. United States
matter was decided before the Supreme Court in 2012 in which they ruled in favor of the US 5-3; state law officers cannot make immigrant arrests unless accompanied by a federal officer; fundamental that foreign governments only have to deal with our federal government over immigration policy, not individual states; strikes down everything except the "reasonable suspicion" provision; under which AZ is prohibited to use national origin or race as a factor
Cesar Chavez
organizer of the Farm Workers Association; led a variety of farm workers strikes during the 60s and 70s; key leader in the struggle for Mexican-American civil rights; urges high ranking Democrats to crack down on illegal immigration into the US because it is undermining labor's position
Immigration Act of 1990
raises annual immigration admissions by 40%; affirms family and employment based admissions even though it was understood that this would continue to increase Latin American, Asian and Caribbean admissions despite the preference for restrictive immigration by most American citizens; 700,000 legal admissions the first year and 675,000 thereafter; provisions to exceed limit for immediate family members
Immigration Reform Act of 1965 and Its Consequences
passes across bipartisan lines in the House and Senate; 170,000 visas for immigrants from the Eastern hemisphere; no single country can be given more than 20,000 visas; 120,000 visas for the western hemisphere with no single country limitations; 64% of visas reserved for family members of US citizens and permanent residents, 20% for occupational categories and 6% for refugees; had a profound impact on immigration into the US
Plyler v. Doe (1982)
prevents the state of TX from denying public education to the children of undocumented immigrants
Mexico/ Illegal Immigration
really became a problem in the 1970s; result of the end of the Bracero Program and new quotas for the western hemisphere; one million undocumented Mexicans each year by the end of the 1970s; despite their expansionist immigration stance, the AFL-CIO still holds highly restrictionist attitudes towards Mexican immigrants; the AFL-CIO was a strong advocate for ending the Bracero Program in 1964; after the expulsion of undocumented Mexican workers by Eisenhower in the 1950s, the US economy was in decline (inflation); American labor was threatened by cheap Mexican labor; Democrats warn that undocumented Mexicans are a danger to welfare policies in the US
Noncommunist Refugees
refugees that weren't escaping communism were essentially ignored (Chile, Haiti, Philippines, and South Korea); 30,000 Haitians sought refugee relief in the 1970s but less than 50 received asylum; this was a big point of contention between African American civil rights advocates and the Carter Administration
1994 Congressional Elections
republicans take majority in both the House and Senate; republicans have a strong alignment with nativists and advocate restrictions on alien admissions and rights
McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
restrictionists offer their own legislation that affirms national origins quotas and emphasizes job skills and family verification as opposed to racial categories; removal of Asian Exclusion, yet only 2,000 visas were provided for Asians); anti-immigration legislatures are better connected in Congress through the use of subcommittees; critics suggest that this will cause the US to suffer in its ideological battle with the Soviet Union; Truman administration tries to apply amendments about employers knowingly hiring illegal immigrants as workers but is unsuccessful; the bill is vetoed by Truman because it condemns racial discrimination and suggests it undermines the ideological battle of the US vs the USSR; when the bill is passed the national origins quotas remain as do strong limits on immigrant arrivals; Northern and Western Europeans receive preference on quotas; special emphasis is placed on job skills of immigrants, their ties to family in the US, and the deportation of communist sympathizers; homosexuals, mentally handicapped and political radicals are not allowed entry
SCIRP Findings
robust, lawful immigration was a positive force in American life because new arrivals were entrepreneurs, hardworking and actually less likely to collect welfare benefits; illegal immigration was a serious problem that needed to be controlled before expanding opportunities for legal immigration because illegal immigrants had an adverse impact on the economy due to the little incentive they have to report crimes, seek medical help or report exploitation by employers; supported 3 tracks of policy to handle legal admission for family reunification, needed job skills and refugee admissions; Asian, Latin American and Caribbean immigrants made valuable contributions to society; bill based on the recommendation of SCIRP gets through the Senate but dies in House in 1982
Problems with the DREAM Act
runs into trouble with the republican party; "amnesty" becomes a cautionary word with the republican party because they fear the DREAM Act would reward illegal immigrants and would create incentive for others; the first version of the Act was defeated in both the House and Senate; democrats worried about appearing soft on illegal immigration
The Cold War and Immigration
such a committee as the Committee of Postwar Immigration Policy would have had very little success before the war because after the war the USA is a superpower and emerges from WW2 with the Soviet Union as the dominant international powers; the Cold War was seen as an ideological battle for the "hearts and minds" of other nations in the world; if the US policy maintained highly restrictive immigration policies, it would be a disadvantage to the Soviet Union; at this time the office of the President of the US emerges as a powerful pro-immigration reform (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson); the Cold War context provides powerful rationale for the Presidents to support immigration because the influence of domestic politics is more powerful when tied to national security; there is a great deal of interest in allowing political refugees from Eastern Europe into the US even though the quota system doesn't allow immigrants from E. Europe; the quotas were recognized as racist so the government was willing to issue executive decrees to override quotas
What is the Y visa?
temporary workers are given this visa that lasts for 2 years then they must return to their home country
Which bill was vetoed by Truman because he believed it condemned racial discrimination and suggested it undermined the ideological battle between the US and the USSR?
the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
What does NCLR stand for and what did the group do?
the National Council of La Raza; lobbied general immigration policies and was against employer sanctions
Arizona SB 1070
there was a perception among many states that the federal government wasn't doing enough to curb illegal immigration; AZ legislation passes the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act" in 2010 that aggressively enforces immigration law and causes many illegal aliens to choose self-deportation; key provisions were revolved around reasonable suspicion, registration, work and probable cause to be stopped and asked for ID; officers have an obligation to stop and assess the immigration status of anyone they are reasonably suspicious is in the US illegally; US federal policy requires all immigrants residing within the US for more than 30 days to have a registration card in their possession at all times; immigrants who aren't authorized to work in the US cannot apply for, solicit, or perform work in AZ; it is illegal to knowingly hire an undocumented worker; officers can arrest an immigrant without a warrant if the officer believes the immigrant committed a crime they could be deported for; the US federal government argues that AZ was overstepping their bounds and that the statues violate existing federal legislation on immigration
What was proposed in the DREAM Act?
to provide permanent residency to the children of illegal immigrants who weren't born in the US but arrived they before they were 16 and were not yet 21, a path to obtainig permanent residency by completing their education or serving in the military
New Latino Electoral Activism
voter registration among Latinos grows by 1.3 million from 1992-1995; Latinos increase from 8-10% of California's electorate between 1992 and 1996
The Stranger at Our Gate
written by Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and celebrated US diversity
A Nation of Immigrants
written by JFK and celebrated the diversity of the US and offered a strong argument against the quota system
