Quote Originally Posted by kevinssdad View Post
Is it possible to find an honest "immigrant" in America? It surely seems that it is not. Still no one explains whey we did not fight this amnesty thing ferociously in 1986, or even a few years later when it became clear that so many were paying a terrible price for America's terrible error in judgment!
For the record, IRCA was not an easy pass in 1986.

Excerpt:

History of IRCA: A Long Road to Passage in 1986

While the 99th Congress and President Reagan were responsible for the passage of IRCA, executive-branch support for a very similar legislative framework actually began with President Jimmy Carter. In August 1977, Carter submitted a plan asking Congress to pass legislation that would add 2,000 new border patrol agents to the U.S.-Mexico border, impose civil and criminal penalties on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants, and allow unauthorized immigrants to legalize their status.

Congress refused to take up the legislation. However, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was able to steer passage of a bill in October 1978 to establish a Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP), a high-level bipartisan commission chaired by Reverend Theodore Hesburgh. In February 1981, the Hesburgh Commission made a series of recommendations including the enactment of penalties on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants, a one-time amnesty for unauthorized immigrants, and a modest increase in legal immigration.

Soon after, President Reagan announced that he would back an immigration compromise modeled on the Hesburgh Commission recommendations. In March 1982, Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Representative Romano Mazzoli (D-KY), who had both been Commission members, introduced the first versions of IRCA (also known as the “Simpson-Mazzoli Act”) in Congress.

The introduction of IRCA proved to be but a first step in a long and arduous journey toward the bill's final passage. In the 97th Congress, the IRCA bill died in the House of Representatives in 1982. After being introduced in the 98th Congress, the bill died again in 1984 amid disagreement between House and Senate negotiators.

Opposition to the legislation came from a spectrum of powerful interest groups. Immigrant advocates argued that IRCA would lead to increased discrimination against Hispanic workers. Agricultural groups claimed that the bill's passage would deplete their labor force. Employers resisted the burdens of the new hiring requirements, and labor unions were opposed to a guest worker program in the bill that they believed would undercut U.S. workers and undermine labor protections. Privacy advocates resisted identification requirements that might lead to a national ID or government-wide databases.

In the fall of 1986, when the demise of the bill had been announced yet again, lawmakers revived it with a set of carefully crafted compromise measures that ultimately enabled the bill to pass. These included the implementation of a new guest worker program for agricultural workers combined with a special legalization program that created a path to U.S. citizenship for certain agricultural workers already in the United States, as well as aid to the states to assist with the costs associated with immigrant integration.

The revival of the bill was viewed as something of a legislative miracle by many members of Congress. Speaking to reporters about the bill's passage, Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA) told the media "It's been a rocky road to get here. We thought we had a corpse. But on the way to the morgue, a toe began to twitch." With the new amendments, Congress passed IRCA during the final hours of the 99th Congress. President Reagan signed the bill into law less than a month later.
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/artic...s-legacy-lives