Secret INS Report: Shocking Details on Amnesty

A report suppressed by the INS provides highly embarrassing and potentially politically explosive reading for current immigration reform advocates, concluding the 1986 amnesty actually caused an increase in illegal immigration.

The law failed, the report explains, because it offered an incentive for more illegal aliens to come and take advantage of a future amnesty.

Critics fear the current proposal by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and others would do the same.

The unreleased Clinton-era Immigration and Naturalization Service report shows the 1986 amnesty caused a rise in the number of unauthorized entries into the United States in the years immediately following.

However, the report also concludes that the “public expressions of opposition to immigration,” in particular the California Proposition 187 measure, likely were contributing factors in the decline in the rate of illegal entry after 1990.

In addition to the hope for a second amnesty, the INS drew another conclusion from the data as to why the rate of illegal entry increased.

It said the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was responsible for the increase in unauthorized entry to the U.S. in 1988-89 partly because during those years the rate of females entering illegally increased to twice the 1987 rate.

These women entered the U.S. to join their male partners and family members who had been granted amnesty, in many cases bringing children with them, the report said. The addition of the families increased the strain on limited American resources, the report said.

With U.S. unemployment still high and the shrinking of the GDP, immigration control advocates are concerned that the Rubio plan will lead to further budgetary hardship. {snip}

The INS report also presents data that shed light on the apparent decrease in illegal entrants to the U.S. in the early 1990s. According the data, the illegal alien entry rate decreased because the IRCA made it easier for the spouses of Mexican-born residents to obtain immigrant visas.

As a result, they did not have to enter the U.S. illegally, though hundreds of thousands of others continued to do so. The Immigration Act of 1990 — passed under George H.W. Bush — increased the annual number of immigrant visas by more than 150,000 beginning in 1992.

The increase in visas also reduced the number of unauthorized entries; however it did not decrease the total number of persons entering the U.S. for those years due to continued illegal immigration. Based on this information, it appears that many who would have attempted to illegally enter were the immigrants who utilized the entry visas.

{snip}