Ray Marshall's Immigration Reform

From 1942-1964, the United States government, in conjunction with the Mexican government, instituted into an immigration agreement known as the Bracero Program. This agreement was an attempt to reduce illegal immigration by instituting a program of legal labor (using bracero, a term literally meaning “arm-man”, loosely translated to “farmhand” ) in which American farmers could hire young Mexican men, pay them low wages and send them back to Mexico once they were no longer needed. In addition to meager wages, these workers received housing, transportation, and meals. By the end of the Bracero Program, a symbiotic relationship had been developed between Untied States employers and Mexican immigrants; facilitated and nurtured by more than …show more content…
Marshall’s role as Secretary of Labor during the Carter administration (1977-1981) provided him a front-row seat to ongoing immigration issues in the United States and makes him a credible resource to discuss and comment on these issues. Marshall’s main thesis is that Congress continues to face difficulty with passing immigration reform, and the flaws in the reforms that have been passed have in no way decreased the number of immigrants crossing in the United States from Mexico. He also states that immigration is not the problem, stating rather that the United States has always been and will remain a nation of …show more content…
This act increased enforcement resources in an effort to prevent illegal entry along the United States/Mexico border. Twelve million dollars was provided at this time for the construction of new physical barriers along the border in addition to an increase of approximately 1,000 new border agents. IIRIRA also expanded the definition of what a criminal alien is and the crimes for which they can be deported for. Deportable crimes also became retroactive meaning that crimes in the past that were not considered deportable now could be used as a reason for deportation. These policy changes and a new definition of “removal” (basically stating that immigrants could be permanently barred from the United States) dramatically increased the deportation of immigrants from the United States, increasing from an annual average of 19,000 per year in 1995 to 154,000 per year in 2003. While the number of illegal immigrants being removed increased during this administration, the total number of foreign born immigrants living in the United States continued to rise. According to the United States census, in 2000, there were 281,421,906 people living in the United States. Of this number, 31,107,889 of them were foreign born and 13,178,276 entered the United States between 1990 and March of 2000. This is an increase of approximately twelve million from the end of the Bush