Amnesty Invites More Illegal Immigration



None other than DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano agrees that adoption of an amnesty might prompt additional illegal immigration. In her testimony in the Senate on April 23, she said, “One of the things that happened after 1986 was there was a surge. We do not want that to happen again.” She was referring to additional illegal immigration of persons who came in after the 1986 law was enacted in hopes of gaining amnesty. Since the 1986 amnesty contained the provision that one had to have been in the country since before 1982, many tried to qualify for the amnesty and succeeded by using false documents for the benefit.

Her suggestion for dealing with this problem was advertising widely that the cutoff date for the proposed amnesty is December 31, 2012. The question that Senators hearing that statement might have asked her is whether publicizing the cutoff date would have any effect on deterring new illegal immigration when the screening process for the provisional legal status will be based on easily falsified pieces of paper such as affidavits – the same way that the 1986 amnesty legalized tens of thousands of ineligible illegal aliens who used fraud to gain the benefit.

About Author

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Jack, who joined FAIR’s National Board of Advisors in 2017, is a retired U.S. diplomat with consular experience. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and has authored studies of immigration issues. His national and international print, TV, and talk radio experience is extensive (including in Spanish).

3 Comments

  1. avatar
    sherri palmer on

    Why do we have to fight so hard for our politicians to LISTEN to us…illegals can barge into any town hall meeting and over shout us and not be arrested…this is insanity. We are all paying a high price because capital hill was so indifferent, so lazy and would not enforce the border and then would not enforce our laws inside our country.

  2. avatar

    Idiocy is always is manipulated by those that want to gain an advantage, case in point – our utterly inept government playing the ultimate fool for illegal alien invaders and visa overstays!