United States federal immigration laws and reform proposals from Ronald Reagan to the second presidency of Donald Trump.
For most of the country's history, immigration to the United States was fueled by the economic opportunities inherent there, the "American dream" - the desire for individual prosperity resulting from material prosperity, and these waves of migration served as important sources of population growth and cultural changes.
Today, more legal immigrants live in the United States than in any other country in the world, and the United States remains the world's most popular immigration destination. Between 1921 and 1965, the country implemented a strict immigration policy which, with the Emergency Quota Act (Emergency Quota Act) and quotas based on national origin, strictly limited the immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside North-West Europe, primarily from the South and in response to a considerable influx of Eastern Europeans.
However, from the 1960s, following the civil rights movements, these ethnic quotas were replaced by a system of preferential visas, which largely supported family migration and was also based on employment, to encourage legal immigration.
The current legislative framework for immigration in the United States was essentially created by Act of 1986 (IRCA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA)
The Real ID Act of 2005 establishes the requirements that driver's licenses and identification cards issued by US states and territories must meet in order to be accepted at federal government facilities and on airline flights. for takeoff in the USA. This law also indirectly affects immigrants, as it primarily regulates the use of a driver's license as an identification document (ID) when replacing non-US-issued ID cards. The law significantly tightened the requirements for the documents and documents necessary for the issuance of a driver's license, and the requirements for the documents that form the basis of applications for political asylum (and other documents related to legal immigration) were also tightened in the law. As an analysis shows, in the implementation of this law, the administrative officials at the federal level are both key actors who must be able to cooperate and perceive common interests.
In the last two decades, there have been other notable bills, such as the Border Security, Counterterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (2005) and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (2006) as an attempt by George W. Bush for a second term. , but in the end they could not pass the Congress in Washington.
The Reform Acts of 1986 and 1996
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (in English: IRCA) is a very important legislative result of the Reagan presidency in terms of migration. In order to deal with the problem of unauthorized immigration, the federal legislation introduced a multi-layered system through a bipartisan agreement in Congress, which on the one hand strengthened the border police, imposed increased requirements on the part of employers, and on the other hand expanded the guest worker visa programs.
An important element of the illegal immigration law was that it provided amnesty for certain long-term residents to obtain legal permanent status, including through a special fast-track process for agricultural workers. Thus, under IRCA, 2.7 million people with long-term residence permits were granted regular, permanent legal status. In addition, the law introduced restrictions and regulatory provisions in order to improve the efficiency of existing laws, such as - as mentioned earlier - imposing stricter requirements for employers regarding the control of work permits. (However, despite the increased human resources and higher budget of the Immigration and Naturalization Service - INS - due to the law, illegal immigration continued to increase in the USA later.)
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) made significant changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The IIRIRA amendments took effect on April 1, 1997.
Bill Clinton, the US president in office at the time, stated that the passage of the legislation strengthened "the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace and in the criminal justice system without punishing those who live in the United States legally." On the day of the signing, the president made it clear that the law would not include, for example, an amendment that would have allowed member states to deny education to the children of illegal immigrants.
IIRIRA was still heavily criticized by liberal professional circles for being too punitive in nature; thus, in the vast majority of deportation cases, it eliminates the possibility of a legal procedure, and it also limits fair immunity from deportation. However, the ultimate goal of the law was deportation (the actual execution of the expulsion decision) in all cases where the person concerned did not voluntarily follow the instructions of the authorities. IIRIRA also limits the documents that employers may accept as proof of employment eligibility .
IIRIRA was intended to curb further illegal migration to the United States. However, it did not bring a real breakthrough; although after the introduction of the law in 1996, the annual number of deportations increased from approximately 50 thousand to well over 200 thousand by the early 2000s, based on available official data, the level of illegal immigration increased overall after the IIRIRA . Despite everything that in the USA illegal stay carries the risk of detention, deportation and/or other sanctions in itself.
2000s: Some reform attempts of the George W. Bush era
The proposal for the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 was passed by the United States House of Representatives on December 16, 2005 in a ratio of 239:182 - with the support of 92 percent of the Republican representatives, with 82 percent of the Democrats voting against it - , but in the end it did not pass the Senate. the "Sensenbrenner Bill" (proposal), after Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican politician representing Wisconsin's 5th congressional district, who sought to balance national security concerns with civil rights. The bill was the catalyst for the 2006 US immigration reform protests, which sharply highlighted the social tensions caused by mass (irregular) migration.
Section 202 of the bill would have made it a crime, among other things, for a person to “assist” illegal immigrants in remaining in the United States by “knowingly or openly denying the fact that such person is an immigrant who is not lawfully authorized to enter the United States. ” to “stay or stay” in the USA. According to its supporters, the bill was created with the specific aim of improving the effectiveness of anti-trafficking laws.
The presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden: the same migration challenges?
In his first State of the Union address on January 30, 2018, Donald Trump outlined the four main pillars of his administration for desirable immigration reform. These corner points were:
1.) the path to citizenship must be marked out for the "Dreamers" (in English following a bill, i.e. young immigrants staying in the USA illegally, without documents, with temporary protected status, typically Hispanic);
2.) funding for border security must be increased;
3.) the Diversity Visa Lottery Program established in 1990 must be ended; and
4.) restrictions on family-based immigration must be introduced (his recent criticism and possible revision is a defining priority of Trump's migration policy).
Already in the summer of 2017, the Trump administration submitted a proposal for the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment ( RAISE ) Act, in order to
by halving the number of issued green cards, they can reduce the level of legal immigration to the USA by 50 percent.
The bill would replace the current immigration system with a strict points system, which would be a significant departure from the American demand-driven employment-based immigration model. According to the legislation, a maximum of 140,000 points-based immigrant visas would be issued per fiscal year, and the spouses and minor children of the primary applicant would be included in this upper limit.
The bill also stipulated an upper limit of 50,000 refugees per year and would have put an end to the aforementioned diversity visa lottery. The RAISE bill did not come up for a vote in the Senate, but a similar separate proposal (restricting legal immigration), which President Trump himself supported, was defeated by the Senate 60-39. On April 22, 2020, Trump signed a presidential order in which he significantly reduced the issuance of green cards to immigrants due to the coronavirus epidemic. This measure primarily affected the parents of immigrants, their adult children, and non-citizen siblings of American citizens.
President Joe Biden has built the image of his migration policy on the fact that he aims to reverse the immigration policies of the Trump administration.
On his first day in office, on January 20, 2021, Biden reversed many of Trump's immigration measures, including halting construction of the Mexican border wall, ending Trump's travel ban restricting entry from 14 countries, and issuing an executive order to strengthen protections for Dreamers.
In May 2023, however, the Biden administration introduced significant new restrictions on asylum seekers at the Mexican border to deter illegal arrivals, allowing deportation of people who have no well-founded fear of persecution or torture and can only decide under exceptionally compelling circumstances this assumption.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also supported by the Open Society Foundations, immediately attacked the new regulation. On June 23, 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration's immigration measures, including the deportation of migrants deemed to pose a serious threat to public safety, could be enforced.
In the case, states Louisiana and Texas argued that federal immigration law requires authorities to detain — and deport — people in the United States illegally, even if they pose little or no risk. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the states could not litigate the issue in the first place.
Featured image: Sándor Gémes/Délmagyar
