Immigration Policy Politics
Why comprehensive immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades, the political forces blocking and driving change, and how immigration became a defining partisan issue.
Three Decades of Failed Reform
The last major overhaul of US immigration law was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, signed by Ronald Reagan, which granted amnesty to roughly three million undocumented immigrants while imposing employer sanctions. Since then, every attempt at comprehensive reform has failed. The 2007 bipartisan bill championed by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain collapsed under opposition from both conservative Republicans who rejected a 'path to citizenship' and liberal groups who opposed guest-worker provisions.
The 2013 'Gang of Eight' bill passed the Senate 68-32 with bipartisan support but was never brought to a vote in the Republican-controlled House. Speaker John Boehner cited the 'Hastert Rule,' an informal norm that the Speaker should not bring legislation to the floor unless a majority of the majority party supports it. The bill had majority support in the full House but not among House Republicans, so it died.
