‘Law Working Well,’ INS Chief Says : But Effectiveness of Landmark ’86 Legislation Disputed

Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Alan C. Nelson, attempting to counter widespread criticism that the landmark 1986 immigration law is failing, declared Thursday that the far-reaching legislation has succeeded in deterring illegal entry into the United States.

“The law is working well,” Nelson said before a group of journalists and academicians gathered for a conference organized by the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, a leading research body on issues involving the two nations.

The commissioner released a sheaf of statistics and findings that he said demonstrated the law’s effectiveness, but his statements were immediately challenged by Wayne A. Cornelius, the center director and a top U.S. expert on immigration, who appeared on the same panel with Nelson.

Specifically, Cornelius said there was no evidence that the critical “employer-sanction” sections of the law--new penalties against those who hire undocumented workers--were succeeding in their goal of drying up the job market for foreigners in the United States illegally. Many workers were getting around the law by using false or borrowed immigration papers, Cornelius said.

“It is clearly premature to claim that the employer sanctions component of the law is working, at least the way that the U.S. Congress intended, and that the INS believes it is working,” said Cornelius, whose center is conducting one of the nation’s most systematic reviews of the law’s impact.

Continue to Find No Alternative

Research in Mexico, Cornelius said, indicates that many people continue to find no alternative to illegal immigration to the United States.

The success of the sanctions approach is vital, according to INS officials, who have long characterized the new penalties as the law’s centerpiece, a concrete means to deprive those without papers of the jobs that draw them to the United States. The INS fought for the inclusion of such penalties in the law, which is formally known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The act, spurred by what some lawmakers characterized as an ever-mounting “invasion” of undocumented immigrants via the U.S.-Mexico border, was the broadest revision of U.S. immigration law in more than three decades.

Nelson’s comments--representing his most definitive assessment of the law’s impact since it was signed into law in November, 1986--come at a time when Cornelius and a number of experts have concluded that the statute had failed its primary goal: the reversal of longtime patterns of illegal immigration to the United States, particularly of Mexican citizens who have long entered without papers via the U.S.-Mexico border.

Indeed, a number of researchers have concluded that the law may have encouraged illegal immigration in several unintended ways, notably by strengthening migrant family networks in the United States via the amnesty program.

But Nelson was adamant in proclaiming the law’s success, although he acknowledged that it could take several years to make a complete assessment. As proof, Nelson cited two statistics: declines of 40% or more in arrests of undocumented people along the U.S.-Mexico border, and an apparent drop in the number of foreigners who overstay their visas.

As for border arrests, long viewed by the INS as an accurate barometer of illegal immigration, Nelson noted that the sharp drops in apprehension occurred at a time when the number of U.S. border guards was being bolstered by more than a quarter, to 4,000 agents. The increase in border staffing was part of the 1986 law.

But Cornelius, the academic expert, said that there was likely a more plausible explanation for the drop in border arrests: Millions who received amnesty are now free to cross back and forth across the international line freely, and no longer risk arrest.

“Therefore,” Cornelius said, “it is entirely possible that the apprehension statistics have been brought down considerably more by the amnesty programs than by the deterrent effect that employer sanctions are having on some would-be illegal entrants.”

New Data Released

Regarding tourists, temporary workers and other foreigners who overstayed visas, Nelson released new data showing that the estimated number of such “overstays” had declined by 12% from 1986 to 1987, to about 200,000 in 1987. He suggested that many were returning to their home countries, convinced that they could no longer find work in the United States.

But Kitty Calavita, a sociologist who helped direct the UC San Diego study, said that the overstay figure was of “questionable value,” not the least because the INS acknowledges it has no firm number regarding how many people remain beyond the time allotted on their visas. There is no requirement that such visitors “check in” with U.S. immigration authorities before leaving the United States, Calavita noted.

While Nelson and other INS officials argue that the law is reducing illegal immigration, some critics say that it may have had the opposite effect.

Experts skeptical of the law’s deterrent effects have noted that a key provision of the law, the amnesty program--which resulted in temporary legal status for about 3.1 million foreigners nationwide--likely strengthened migrant family networks within the United States, thus encouraging more relatives to head for el norte, with or without papers. Almost 75% of amnesty recipients were citizens of Mexico, which accounts for the vast majority of illegal entrants into the United States.

More Difficult to Enter U.S.

In addition, researchers at UC San Diego have noted that the U.S. Border Patrol buildup accomplished by the 1986 law has made it more difficult to enter the United States without papers, raising smuggling fees and other associated costs for undocumented entries. Thus, the researchers found, illegal aliens who may have opted to return to their home countries--a result expected by INS officials--have been discouraged from doing so because they have found themselves so much in debt once they finally did arrive in the United States that they had to remain and work in order to get out of the red.

In fact, the researchers found no evidence of a widespread return of undocumented immigrants to Mexico after passage of the law.

Exacerbating the economic predicament of the remaining illegal immigrants, the researchers found, is the fact that the law has resulted in a greater segmentation of the immigrant work force, with legal workers at the top and the illegal at the bottom, reliant on the lowest-paying jobs. “What the 1986 law has done thus far,” Cornelius said, “is to add some new layers at the bottom of the immigrant work force, rather than shrink it in absolute terms.”

U.S. officials have estimated that 3 million to 6 million people reside illegally in the United States, although no one knows for sure.

The UC San Diego study, ongoing for more than two years, involved a range of interviews in Southern California, including interviews with 105 employees, 500 workers and 200 recently arrived job-seeking undocumented workers. In addition, research teams traveled to three traditional sending communities in Mexico, where they spoke with more than 600 people, including 234 recent migrants to the United States, almost half of them illegal.