The law that broke US immigration

Why the US has so many undocumented immigrants.

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Immigration looked very different before 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). The law was supposed to stop undocumented immigration by increasing enforcement and punishing people for being in the US undocumented. Instead, it incentivized people to stay in the US — and the undocumented population doubled.

When researching this story we used a lot of great resources. Here are a few of the most helpful:

This collection of articles on IIRIRA by the Center for Migration Studies explains many angles on the law itself, the politics of the time that led to its passing, and the ongoing impact: https://cmsny.org/publications/jmhs-sc-iirira/

Douglas S. Massey at Princeton and his co-authors have written about how border enforcement backfired, including in this 2016 paper: https://spia.princeton.edu/system/files/research/documents/684200.pdf

We got data on return probabilities to Mexico after a first undocumented trip from the Mexican Migration Project: https://mmp.opr.princeton.edu/

Polling data about Americans’ views on immigration come from the Pew Research Center and Gallup: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/majority-of-americans-continue-to-say-immigrants-strengthen-the-u-s/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx

Annual Border Patrol budget comes from the American Immigration Council: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcement-and-border-security

We relied on Pew’s data on the number of undocumented immigrants in the US, which also explains more on the changing nature of immigration to the US in recent years: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/13/key-facts-about-the-changing-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population/

The Migration Policy Institute has covered the issue over the years, including in this recent policy brief: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/rethinking-us-legal-immigration-road-map

Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh has written about the issue, including this article on the three- and 10-year bars: https://www.cato.org/blog/removing-310-year-bars-not-amnesty

Check out Vox’s past reporting on this issue to get more background:
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11515132/iirira-clinton-immigration
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22451177/biden-border-immigration-enforcement-detention-deportation

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