Immigration into the United States fluctuated throughout the 20th century because of varying economic conditions. But the changes made by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 drastically increased the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. This in turn has had a negative impact on the quality of life of many Americans today due to the mass increase in population.
Worse, the United States has mass illegal immigration because successive Congresses and Presidents have decided they want it. In one action after another over the last decade, they have declined to approve measures known to be effective to slow the flow of illegal immigrants, they have decided to end various kinds of enforcement that had been effective, and they have approved a series of rewards to those who violate immigration laws.
Immigration Impacts
Special Interests
Union Leaders
Traditionally, the union movement strongly supported every legislative initiative in Congress to restrict immigration enforce existing immigration laws. Movement leaders knew that fluctuations in union membership were inversely related to prevailing immigration trends. Today, the AFL-CIO has turned its back on U.S. workers by endorsing illegal immigration & open borders.
Political Parties
A “path to citizenship” would guarantee millions more Democratic voters (likely by a 3-to-1 advantage) swelling voter rolls over decades — both the amnesty recipients and the migration chains of relatives they will sponsor for visas. However, Republican leaders may say they want to shrink Big Government, but not if it gets in the way of pleasing their cheap-labor corporate donors and the U.S.
Religious Lobby
In general, Religious Globalists believe that the needs of people in the Third World have priority over the needs of people in more advanced nations when it comes to questions of whether migrants should cross borders. Underlying this is the assessment that most would-be immigrants come from conditions that are worse than those for the Americans who may be hurt by their entry.
Big Business
The Big Business Lobbyists are used to geetting nearly everything they want from politicians in Washington, D.C. when it comes to favoring cheap foreign labor over unemployed Americans. This is a bi-partisan problem.
Agricultural Lobby
The Agricultural lobby is a powerful opponent of state legislatures who want to verify the legal status of workers or reduce illegal immigration through interior enforcement, both of which the Ag lobby views as a threat to its illegal labor supply. However, U.S. citizens comprise 25 percent of all domestic crop laborers. Another 21 percent are legal immigrants. Yet the media is conspicuously silent on these legal farm workers.
Open Border Libertarians
Free-Market Libertarians on the Right with their emphasis on the individual suggests that everybody in the world should have the opportunity to rise as high as their talents and energy allow, without the restriction of borders. However, as Roy Beck has demonstrated in his very popular “Gumballs” video, the impact this would have is negligible at best, and at worse, prevents real solutions for third world poverty.