The Legacy of the IRCA Amnesty

     

By Rick Oltman, SF Immigration Examiner (Part VI of VI)

Since 1986 the IRCA amnesty has encouraged millions of illegal aliens to come to our country and they have had an impact on crime, education, healthcare, employment and the environment. 

Crime is higher today than it otherwise would be without the amnesty.  The birthrate to illegal aliens and those amnestied has added to the number of young men who make up the cohort of the prime crime age group, 14 – 24 year olds.  We already have crime.  The result of the amnesty is that we have more crime.
The education system is overburdened with students as a result of the amnesty and taxes have gone up and literacy has gone down as schools struggle to deal with the situation. 

Hospital emergency rooms are now Doctor’s offices for illegal aliens receiving non-emergency health care that is cost shifted to the taxpayer and healthcare insurance companies, who pass those increased costs on to the insured. 

Over 8 million illegal aliens that the government knows about because of Social Security number no-matches are working in America.  That’s 8 million jobs that should be available to American workers.
The environment is impacted as our population rapidly grows as a result of illegal immigration (and legal immigration) and their birth rate.  In 39 years, at the current rate of population increase, there will be 500 million people in America with the corresponding ecological footprint.

Bill King echoes Al Nelson.  He and Hal Ezell both said, “We thought it would work and we should never ever do it again.”

King also adds, “Everyone was sold a bill of goods on the program….Arrests in ‘86 were 1,767,400 brought on by the amnesty program, encouraging people to come… Amnesty, in general is a **** poor idea and I would hold all the people in Washington criminally responsible for passing the last one…If I went back today, I would get fired  the first day…I couldn’t work under conditions today.  If any of us went back today we would be fired.”

The Chief Enforcement Agent of the I.N.S. Western Region commented in the early ‘90s about his main problem with the amnesty.  Besides letting the illegals stay, he observed that those who were amnestied would soon have permanent resident status, some would apply for citizenship and some would apply and be accepted to work for the INS and the Border Patrol.  And then we would have a situation where illegal aliens who had broken our immigration laws would be in positions to enforce, or not, our immigration laws.

The IRCA Amnesty and the illegal immigration it encouraged hasn’t created all the problems that we have in America today.  But, what is true is that every problem America has is made worse by that amnesty and the illegal immigration that followed.

Considering everything we have experienced in the past 25 years, it’s fair to say that no event other than war has done more to transform, some would say mutate, American culture and our country than the 1986 IRCA Amnesty.