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Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of "Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad."1 The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists.
In brief, this report finds:
This report examines the links between legal and illegal immigration. First, it sets the historical context of American immigration. It considers the data on legal immigration, illegal immigration, including countries of origin, and the ways present immigration policy and processes enable and encourage lawbreaking. Finally, policy recommendations are offered.
Immigration in American History
It has been said that legal and illegal immigration are two sides of the same coin. That is, when legal immigration levels have been high, illegal immigration levels have also tended to be high. Similarly, when legal immigration is lower, there is less illegal immigration.
What could explain this phenomenon? A short review of American immigration history gives much-needed perspective. Immigration to the United States has ebbed and flowed. In general, from 1776 to 1965, this "nation of immigrants" averaged 230,000 immigrants per year.2 By the 1990s, immigration averaged about a million each year, plus illegal immigrants.
Historical Immigration Levels
Table 1 shows average immigration levels from the colonial era beginning in 1607 when Jamestown, Virginia, was settled until 1965. The American immigration experience has seen much lower levels of immigrant arrivals compared with today's aberration.
Noting the ebb and flow of immigration within American historic periods, expert Carl Hampe said "average annual immigration rates were well below 400,000 during 1850-1880, an average of 520,000 legal immigrants entered each year between 1880-1890, but . . . fell below 450,000 from 1890-1899."3 He continued:
During the peak "Ellis Island" period of U.S. immigration, 1902-1914, 12.4 million immigrants entered the country (over 900,000 per year). However, numerous "ebb periods" emerged after 1914 (particularly during the Depression, when only 528,000 persons entered the U.S. during the entire decade of 1931-1940). From 1925 to 1976, legal immigration did not exceed 500,000 in any one year.
One thing is for certain, the 1902-1914 period is an historical aberration: 900,000 immigrants per year on average far outstrips any other comparable 13-year slices of U.S. history.4 (emphasis in original)
Average annual immigration levels following the high period from 1880 to 1924, which included the "Great Wave," subsided greatly to 178,000 a year on average (see Table 1). But this level was still the second-highest period of immigration up to that point.
Runaway Mass Immigration
Immigration expanded rapidly after 1965, in part because Congress shifted the legal preference system to family relations and away from employment needs and immigrant ability.5
The new scheme provided seven, up from the previous four, preference categories. The new policy expanded family-based categories to include relatives well beyond the initial immigrant, spouse, and minor children. Nonquota immigrants came to include others beyond nuclear family units, such as aged parents of U.S. citizens.6
The effect of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments -- and exacerbated by subsequent legislation in 1980, 1986, and 1990 -- was to increase dramatically the number of immigrants and radically expand the pool of potential immigrants.7 Hampe explained, "The Immigration Act of 1990 significantly expanded a legal immigration system which the 1965 Amendments ensured would have a built-in growth mechanism."8 (emphasis added)
The numbers of new immigrants continued to climb after the new law went into effect in 1968. During the first few years the United States averaged nearly 400,000 newcomers. By the end of the 1970s the number had soared to 800,000. In the 1980s immigration, still theoretically limited to 270,000 a year, averaged more than 700,000. During the decade the nation absorbed 8.9 million legal immigrants and, by most estimates, at least 2 million illegal ones. In absolute numbers the 1980s saw more immigrants (legal and illegal) than any other decade in U.S. history. By the early 1990s more than 1 million new legal immigrants were arriving in the United States every year, accounting for almost half of its population growth.9
Figure 1 shows the sharp rise in immigration by decade. Legal immigration has jumped fourfold from 2,515,479 admissions between 1951 and 1960 to 9,095,417 between 1991 and 2000.
Another way to distinguish this escalation is by comparing annual admissions. For example, the United States admitted 265,393 immigrants in 1960 and 296,697 in 1965, the year of immigration expansionism. By 1969, 358,579 immigrants gained admission, 462,315 in 1977, 601,516 in 1987, and 915,900 in 1996. Going from two and a half million immigrants admitted in a decade to a million a year would overtax any immigration system; this rapid rise has stressed the U.S. system tremendously.
Chain Migration. This profligate immigration system spurred "chain migration," which feeds illegalimmigration.
. . . [R]elatives of U.S. residents had never been given top preference in immigration law until the 1965 [A]ct. If the legislation had extended the preference only to spouses and minor children, there would have been little effect on the numbers. But it also gave preference to adult sons and daughters, parents of adult immigrants, brothers and sisters. If one member of a family could gain a foothold, he or she could begin a chain of migration within an extended family, constantly jumping into new families through in-laws and establishing new chains there.10
The inherent problems arising from "chain migration" manifest themselves in relation to both legal and illegal immigration. The illegal immigration aspect is discussed later. But on the legal side, millions may claim permanent residency in the United States and even become U.S. citizens on the sole basis of an extended family relation.
[B]ecause family reunification policy now permits the creation of migration "chains" -- immigrants petitioning for their parents and brothers and sisters, who may in turn petition for their children and other relatives -- family immigration has become a form of entitlement that may crowd out other types of immigration that would be equally or more beneficial to American society. In addition, "chain migration" allows the demand for family immigration to grow exponentially.11
How does chain migration work? One example adequately demonstrates the process and shows the opportunities and temptations for illegal immigration.
Under the new preference system, an engineering student from India could come to the United States to study, find a job after graduating, get labor certification, and become a legal resident alien. His new status would then entitle him to bring over his wife, and six years later, after being naturalized, his brothers and sisters. They in turn could begin the process all over again by sponsoring their wives, husbands, children, and siblings. Within a dozen years one immigrant entering as a skilled worker could generate dozens of visas for distant relatives.12
Not only is a single immigrant responsible for a long chain of numerous links, but also those chains of migrants help explain legal immigration's exponential growth. The record for chain migration is reported to be a petitioner who brought in 83 immigrants.13
Meaningless "Caps," Real Backlogs, and Waiting Lists. Family-based preferences that give rise to chain migration cause even more profound consequences because capitation levels are not capped in fact. While family-based immigration is "capped" at 480,000 admissions a year, the nominal cap is "piercable." Piercing the cap happens due to nonquota immigrant categories (spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, parents of U.S. citizens) outpacing the supposedly limited overall family immigration amount. The cap is also "flexible," meaning unused employment-based visas from one year are added to family-based preferences the next year or vice versa. This flexibility depends on the level of demand for certain visas.14
Related to these features and to chain migration, as well as to illegal immigration, are "oversubscription and large backlogs in the family categories."15 The massive IRCA amnesty led to tremendous demand for the numerically limited spouses and minor children of lawful permanent resident visas. Even with the IRCA transition program to accommodate excessive numbers of LPR spouses and minor children, 88,673 visas of dependents were given in fiscal year 1994, the last year of the program.
And still 80,000 dependents of LPRs were applying for admission each year. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform reported that this group's waiting list was "high and rising annually. In January 1995, the waiting list for spouses and minor children was 1,138,544, up 8.7 percent from 1994 when it was 1,047,496, which was up 9.2 percent from 1993, when the backlog was 958,839."16 The wait time for LPR spouses and minor children in the mid-1990s was longer than three years and rising fast.
The bipartisan commission reported that the "ongest backlog exists in the brothers and sisters of [U.S. citizens] preference category, where there are almost 1.6 million registrants . . . making up 45.5 percent of the total visa waiting list . . . ." This translated into waits of "ten years for countries with favorable visa availability and even longer for oversubscribed countries."17 Adult siblings from the Philippines, India, and Mexico accounted for the greatest number of applicants. Filipinos in this category were waiting 17 years for a visa.
Married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens queued up in a backlog of some 260,000 applicants. After the 1990 Immigration Act (which caused most backlogs to multiply), most people in this category had four-year waits. However, Filipinos, making up 56 percent of the backlog, faced decades-long waits. Mexicans were on a wait list of 13 years.
For unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens, Mexicans constantly have oversubscribed this category. But the Philippines backlog meant nearly 10-year waits. Unmarried sons and daughters of LPRs have met backlogs, "especially since IMMACT [of 1990]." The commission said the waiting lists in this category were growing in the 1990s, and expected to see 18-year waits.18 "More than one-fifth of those in the backlog are from Mexico, with additional significant demand from the Dominican Republic and the Philippines."19
In other words, American immigration policy was set on "automatic pilot" in 1965 and the engine shifted into high gear in subsequent laws. In effect, foreigners are determining American immigration levels by default -- by simply exploiting an overly generous, misprioritized immigration system. As we shall see, this mass legal immigration has had tremendous adverse implications in terms of illegal immigration.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
At the core of America's illegal immigration crisis is the fact that illegal immigration is a function of legal immigration. As legal immigration has been liberalized, illegal immigration has expanded alongside it.
In addition to volume, an important aspect to consider is the predominant source countries of immigration. Figure 2 illustrates the share of immigrants from 20 of the top sending countries over the decades of the 1960s through the 1990s. Mexico has come to dominate American immigration unlike any other single nation. While a significant source country in the 1960s, Mexico did not then overshadow all other countries of origin as it has come to increasingly in each subsequent decade.
(Click on figure for a larger version)
Figure 2 also shows how the traditional source nations retained a decent share of the immigrant flow during the 1960s, but that their proportions have generally fallen in real terms in subsequent decades, as well as relative to new source countries. This may be attributed in part to the post-1965 preference system's bias toward family-based and especially extended relatives' immigration. Yet another detail to bear in mind here is the increase in immigrants occurring heavily from less developed countries, rather than from developed nations.
By comparing Figure 2 with Table 2, one may see that several of the rising source countries of legal immigration in the 1990s gained firmer footholds in part because of amnesties, particularly the 1986 IRCA amnesty. Most of the top 20 IRCA amnesty countries of origin, seen in Table 2, sent even more immigrants in the following decade. Legalized aliens could turn around and sponsor family members to immigrate.
Another picture of the relation between legal and illegal immigration may be seen in Figure 3. While reliable estimates of illegal immigration are harder to come by before the 1990s,20 this graph shows that, in general, as annual immigrant admissions grew over the 1980s and 1990s (with a spike by 1991 because of the effects of the 1986 IRCA amnesty), illegal immigration has actually climbed along with legal immigration.
On paper, illegal immigration levels fell in 1991 alongside a jump in legal immigration due to IRCA amnesty legalizations. However, Figure 3 shows that the IRCA amnesty did not reduce illegal immigration, as experts and policymakers promised. Rather, the amnesty gave hope to millions more would-be illegal entrants that the United States would repeat itself and one day legalize them, too.
The overall illegal alien population is estimated at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million in 1980, growing to 5 million by 1987. About 3 million illegal aliens were legalized under IRCA. The remaining illegal population stood at 2 million in 1988. Estimates say 3.5 million illegal aliens lived here by 1990. Illegal residents numbered 3.9 million by October 1992 (a figure undoubtedly in flux and masked by much immigration fraud and abuse in the IRCA amnesty).
By October 1996, 5 million illegal aliens were estimated to live in the United States -- in other words, the illegal population had replenished itself in less than a decade (see Figure 4). The number of illegal alien residents had doubled from 1990 to 2000, from 3.5 million to 7 million. By 2005, some 9.6 million to 9.8 million illegal aliens lived in the United States -- more than triple the number of IRCA amnesty recipients, triple the illegal alien population in 1980, and twice the level of illegal immigration in 1996.21
Table 3 shows the estimated levels of illegal aliens residing in the United States throughout the 1990s, as well as the annual growth in the illegal population for that period. INS researchers noted that apparent drops in annual growth of the illegal population during this decade are attributable to policy changes, including the granting of temporary protected status, or TPS, to certain illegal alien nationalities and amnesties directed at certain groups.22
Figure 5 and Table 4 illustrate similar phenomena. Notable are the countries listed in these graphics, compared to the oversubscribed chain migration nations named in the previous section. Figure 5 indicates the proportion of the foreign-born population from certain countries for 1990 and 2000. Further, it shows for those years the portion of a country's immigrants who comprise the illegal population as a segment of the whole number of immigrants from a country. For example, Mexicans, legal and illegal, far outnumber immigrants from other nations. Mexicans who are unlawfully present approached half of all Mexican immigrants in 1990 and exceeded half in 2000.
Also, Figure 5 shows that for the countries charted, all of which are among the top 15 senders of illegal aliens, only El Salvador -- and that because of 200,000 Salvadorans being amnestied in the interim period -- saw a decrease in its illegal alien population from 1990 to 2000.
Table 4 gives the top 10 countries responsible for America's immigrant population in 2000 as well as the top 10 illegal alien senders. Half of the top 10 countries of birth also number among the top senders of illegal aliens. Mexico is readily the heaviest exporter of its populace, legally and unlawfully, to the United States. Table 4 also shows that the five source countries of illegal aliens that are not among the top 10 overall immigration source countries are all in relative proximity to the United States -- in Central America, the Caribbean, or South America. And of the 10 chief immigrant countries of birth, only Cuba and Vietnam are not among the 15 worst sources of illegal aliens. Cuba is somewhat of a special case, as the United States has maintained special policies for Cubans fleeing the Castro regime.
Crux of the Problem: Mexico
Mexico easily stands out as the worst cause of America's immigration problems. Continual Mexican migration northward, both legally and illegally, may pose the biggest threat to U.S. security and sovereignty.23 "This situation is unique for the United States and unique in the world. No other First World country has a land border with a Third World country, much less one of two thousand miles."24
Large-scale Mexican immigration began growing in the 1960s and "accelerated in the 1970s as the number of Mexicans in the U.S. tripled between 1970 and 1980. The number doubled again by 1990 and again by 2000. In 2004, the [Census Bureau's] March CPS shows 10.6 million people born in Mexico [and residing in America]. This figure represents more than a 13-fold increase over the 1970 census."25 Mexicans represent nearly a third of the foreign-born population; this is about three times the proportion of the next three countries of origin (China, Philippines, India) combined.26
Mexican illegal migration explains much of the growth in illegal immigration overall. "Since the mid-1990s, the number of new unauthorized migrants has equaled or exceeded the number of new legal immigrants. For Mexico, 80-85 [percent] of new settlers in the U.S. are unauthorized."27 Half of Mexicans living in America are illegal aliens.28
The 1986 mass amnesty exacerbated the Mexican illegal immigration problem. Of the 3 million legalized foreign lawbreakers, the INS said 75 percent were Mexican. As previously mentioned, they became eligible to sponsor family members to join them here (or at least to legalize their status), naturalize, and sponsor even more relatives, this time distant relatives. Proximity has made it easy for "mixed status" households to proliferate.29
And amnesty, especially of Mexicans, only sparked more illegal immigration.
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) had the most sweeping impact on immigration policy since the repeal of national origins quotas in 1965. In the next several years, immigrant admissions would soar to new heights as the new permanent residents brought in their family members. This created unanticipated problems, including long backlogs in the queue for immigrant visas, skyrocketing costs for the provision of government services in the areas where the immigrants and their families settled, and sustained border control problems. It was clear that the implementation of employer sanctions would be no quick fix. The magnet had not been demagnetized. An exodus of emigrants from Central America continued through the late 1980s, and this influx raised questions about the asylum system. Applicants needed only to make a minimal showing that they faced a "well-founded fear of persecution" in their homeland in order to be granted an asylum review. By late in 1988, the INS office in Harlingen, Texas, was receiving 1,700 applications for asylum each week . . . .30
As mentioned, estimates using census data say there were 3 million illegal aliens present in 1980, rising to 4 million in 1986. The 3 million amnesty recipients were scarcely through the legalization process when, by 1992, the illegal foreign-born population was back up to 3.9 million. It doubled again by 2000 and now may exceed 10 million.31 Much of this increase may be attributed to Mexico.
Given that mass immigration, both legal and illegal, predominately stems from Mexico (see Table 4) and that the IRCA amnesty only fed the desire and opportunity for Mexicans to migrate northward (legally and illegally), important findings from the New Immigrant Survey show the "two sides of the same coin" nature of legal and illegal immigration.
Table 5 indicates that Mexico leads all other source countries in two key routes to unlawful presence in the United States before eventual legalization. Mexicans account for more than two of five illegal border crossers. Mexicans also lead as visa abusers.
The New Immigrant Survey also found that, whereas two-thirds of adult immigrants had spent time in the United States prior to receiving a permanent resident visa (including about a third as illegal aliens), 84 percent of Mexican immigrants had previously been to the United States. "[A] clear majority (57%) of Mexican immigrants have prior experience as illegal border crossers and another 9% are visa abusers."32 That is, two-thirds of Mexican immigrants were once illegal aliens.
In short, Mexico's abutting the United States with a 2,000-mile border, coupled with lax American enforcement, wide economic disparity, the Mexican government's de facto policy of driving its poorest residents northward, and vast numbers of Mexican immigrants already here to harbor illegal aliens and steer them to jobs all provide opportunity and motive for immigration lawbreaking on a grand, systematic scale.
The Flip Side of the Coin
As we have seen, as legal immigration levels have skyrocketed to near-unprecedented highs, illegal immigration has risen alongside it. The result has been nearly four decades of constant, steeply increasing immigration both lawful and unlawful. As Samuel Huntington put it, "Substantial illegal entry into the United States is a post-1965 and Mexican phenomenon."33
The post-1965 mass immigration scheme has established patterns and affected human behavior in response to present U.S. immigration policies. Just as people respond to any changes in law, human beings (and often their foreign governments) have adjusted accordingly to the possibilities of immigrating to the United States.
In other words, American immigration policy has directly influenced the choices foreigners have made and what they have come to expect. Changes in tax law or economic policy, such as certain tax deductions or tax credits, influence people's economic behavior; it is no different with immigration policy.
By Any Means Possible. The incentive to immigrate to the United States arises from opportunity, the experiences of relatives or peers, and other forces. Liberal family-based immigration preferences, along with myriad nonimmigrant visa classes from tourist to student to business investor, provide ample immigration opportunity to many more people. Whereas one might not otherwise have contemplated uprooting and moving halfway around the globe before, the existence of opportunity affects one's decisions.
Foreigners with access to immigration lawyers or human smugglers or with a familial relation already in the United States can exploit one of the licit or illicit opportunities to get to the United States. Everything from becoming a "mail-order bride" in what amounts to a marriage of convenience (if not an outright sham) to enrolling in one of the many scams exploiting loopholes such as the "investor visa" program and filing bogus asylum claims provides opportunity to immigrate.
As the costs of international travel and international communication -- telephone, Internet -- have fallen, friends and relatives who have already immigrated to the United States can more easily share tales of their experiences in America. Or the evidence of immigrant relatives' remittances to those who remain behind testify to the relatively higher earnings paid by U.S. jobs.
The United States enjoys the world's highest standard of living. "Poverty" by U.S. standards is a far better lot than real poverty as it occurs in most of the world's countries, and those living in America below the official "poverty line" often have living quarters and First World "creature comforts" that those in other nations' middle classes lack.
The United States affords a stable political system, a legal system based on the rule of law, broad individual liberty and economic opportunity, a sound economy, and generous government welfare entitlements, in addition to extremely generous private charity. America is relatively free of public corruption and offers a safe, secure place to live. By comparison to many places, would-be immigrants may view the United States as a land of vast wealth where the streets are seemingly paved with 14-karat gold.
Even purely from an economic perspective, moving to America has a lot of appeal. The average Mexican earns a twelfth of an American's wages. There are 4.6 billion people around the world who make less than the average Mexican. (Would-be immigrants often fail to take into account the much higher cost of living in the United States that accompanies those higher wages.) Therefore, the "pull" factor of more money entices many aliens.
Because one technically qualifies for an immigration visa, yet the backlogs may be long, many aliens immigrate illegally. They wait for their visa number to come up while living here illicitly. "Some do not wait their turn, but instead immigrate illegally to the U.S., hoping (and in many cases succeeding) to wait here until their visa number becomes available. Thus, the unrealistic expectations created by the failure to set firm priorities in the system of legal immigration causes further incentive for illegal immigration."34 Such dishonesty and cheating on aliens' part are functions of chain migration.
Determined alien lawbreakers have discovered ways to exploit legal loopholes and "end-run" the system. Illegal immigration and cheating quickly have become means to the end of permanent legal immigration. For example,
. . . many potential immigrants came on tourist visas and worked illegally. While living and working illegally, they could obtain labor certification based on their employment and apply for immigrant visas. Once a visa was approved, sometimes two or three years later, an applicant could return to his home country for a day, pick up the visa, and return as a legal resident entitled to hold any job available.35
Another characteristic of immigration that relates to both the legal and illegal sides of the equation, as well as to the use of every possible means of illegal immigration, is so-called "mixed families." This term may refer to any of a combination of households in which some members are U.S. citizens or legal residents and others are illegal aliens.
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The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration ...