34 years of the Immigration Act of 1990

President George H. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 into law 34 years ago. The anniversary fell on “Black Friday” this year. The legislation certainly was a steal of a deal for anyone in the market for discount labor. The bill opened up access to the global workforce to an extent not seen since before the Great War.

At the time President Bush signed the bill, 18 percent of full-time U.S. workers couldn’t support a family of four above the poverty line. The middle class appeared headed for permanent decline. Inequality was growing. Worker compensation was no longer keeping pace with increased worker productivity.

Government and economic studies had already demonstrated that mass immigration during the 1980s contributed to the decline of each of those indicators (blue-ribbon federal commissions had reached similar conclusions in the late 1960s and 1970s). The increase in immigration after 1965 had been a mistake (and a broken promise from the government). One commission after another recommended limiting annual immigration to 350,000-400,000 per year. Congress ignored them. Why? We have a pretty good clue.

By the end of the 1980s, mass immigration was redistributing $100 million every year from the working class to the investment class. The Immigration Act of 1990 increased legal immigration to more than one million per year, where it has remained for over 30 years. Mass immigration today redistributes $500 billion every year from the working class to the investment class.

Roy Beck writes in Back of the Hiring Line:

“Only three Democrats and five Republicans opposed the massive increase.

“The bill was much more hotly contested in the House by a bi-partisan opposition of 65 Democrats and 127 Republicans. But the bill passed 231-to-192. President George H.W. Bush enthusiastically signed it into law….

“….Almost as if to make sure the underemployed American workforce was clear about the government’s disdain for them, the congressional majority included a visa lottery in the new law. The government invited people from most countries around the world to enter the lottery which each year would randomly give out 55,000 lifetime work permits….”

“….Congress found it easier and preferable to randomly recruit workers from the far corners of the world with the least connection to the United States than to recruit fellow Americans from the abandoned corners of the nation’s own communities.”

If the immigration increases of the Immigration Act of 1965 were a mistake, the same could not be said of the 1990 expansion. This was a deliberate abandonment of the working class. The economy went into a recession shortly after the bill was signed, but the government moved ahead with plans to increase foreign workers anyway. Americans’ only consolation prize in the bill was yet another federal commission to study the impacts of mass immigration on American workers.

That commission, chaired by the late Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-TX), issued recommendations that now form part of the foundation of NumbersUSA’s work. In order to get immigration numbers down to more economically just and sustainable levels, we advocate for specific “Great Solution” bills every Congress, and grade each member of Congress based on how well they support those necessary reforms.

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Related: Barbara Jordan’s Vision of Immigration Reform

Listen: Who Was Barbara Jordan and Why Does Her Work Still Matter Today? Parsing Immigration Policy, with Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, and Eric Ruark, Director of Research & Sustainability at NumbersUSA.

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