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Africa—and the civil rights movement in the United States. It allocated 170,000 visas to
               the Eastern Hemisphere, with a ceiling of 20,000 per country, and 120,000 to the
               Western Hemisphere, with no per-country limit. However, a seven-category preferential
               system for visa admissions gave priority not to nationality, but to relatives of U.S. citizens
               and individuals with needed skills and abilities. McCarran-Walter had introduced similar
               preferences for U.S. relations and job skills, but only within the strict national quotas.22
               Supporters of the 1965 Act, which the Senate approved in a vote of 76 to 18, did not
               anticipate drastic changes to the existing pattern of immigration. The bill was intended to
               eliminate discrimination among immigrants, not to encourage all races to immigrate; few
               Asians and Africans were expected to arrive because, according to one of the bill’s
               sponsors, the family-ties and job-skills provisions would “hold the numbers down.”23
               In a dramatic illustration of the law of unintended consequences, the 1965 Immigration
               Act catalyzed an era of mass immigration and a fundamental demographic overhaul. The
               prioritization of family reunification caused the number of nonquota immigrants to
               skyrocket. Three times as many legal immigrants crossed U.S. borders between 1965 and
               1995 as during the 30 years before, and unprecedented numbers came from Asia and
               Latin America. Within five years of the bill’s passage, 27,859 immigrants entered the
               country from India alone.24 An amendment passed in 1976 extended the 20,000 per-
               country ceiling and the preference system to Western Hemisphere countries, and another
               passed in 1978 merged the separate hemispheric ceilings into one worldwide limit of
               290,000 visas.25
               Meanwhile, a new debate over immigration policy was fueled by heightened job
               competition amid stagflation and recession in the late 1970s; the Mariel boatlift crisis of
               1980, in which some 124,000 undocumented Cuban migrants entered the United States
               in 25 overcrowded vessels;26 and a continuing influx of Haitians. In 1981, the Select
               Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy identified undocumented (illegal)
               immigration as the country’s primary immigration problem.27
               The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was primarily designed to reverse
               the sharp increase in the number of immigrants entering the country illegally. It was the
               product of deep congressional divisions, however, and it effectively expanded both legal
               and illegal immigration.


               On the one hand, the law established penalties for employers who “knowingly” hired,
               recruited, or referred aliens who were not authorized to work in the United States. It also
               strengthened U.S. border controls, through improved technology and a 50 percent
               increase in Border Patrol staff. On the other hand, IRCA established a Visa Waiver Pilot
               Program that enabled the admission of certain nonimmigrant foreigners without visas for
               educational, business, and other purposes (a system now notorious for allowing the entry
               of some of the 9/11 hijackers), and authorized a new classification for seasonal agricultural
               workers (SAW). In a provision that continues to generate controversy, the law also
               legalized all aliens who had resided in the United States unlawfully since before January 1,
               1982.




               Controlling America’s Borders: The Ongoing Debate


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