Immigration Laws and Policies Since the (1980s) - Illegal Immigration Reform Andimmigrant Responsibility Act (iirira)of 1996

On September 30, 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA; PL 104-208) became law. In an effort to reduce illegal immigration, IIRIRA included the following among its many provisions:

• Required doubling the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents to 10,000 by the year 2001 and increasing equipment and technology at air and land ports of entry
• Authorized improvements of southwest border barriers
• Toughened penalties for immigrant smuggling (up to ten years in prison, fifteen years for third and subsequent offenses) and document fraud (up to fifteen years in prison)
• Increased the number of INS investigators for work site enforcement, tracking aliens who overstayed visas, and investigating alien smuggling
• Increased detention space for criminals and other deportable aliens
• Instituted a new "expedited removal" proceeding (denial of an alien's entry into the United States without a hearing) to speed deportation of aliens with no documents or with fraudulent documents
• Authorized three voluntary pilot programs to enable employers to verify the immigrant status of job applicants and to reduce the number and types of documents needed for identification and employment eligibility
• Required a legally binding affidavit of support from immigrant sponsors, who must have an income of at least 125% of the poverty level (in 2005 the poverty guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services were set at $19,350 for a family of four and $25,870 for a family of six living in the forty-eight contiguous states and District of Columbia)
• Instituted a bar on admissibility for aliens seeking to reenter the United States after having been unlawfully present in the country—a bar of three years for aliens unlawfully present from six months to a year and a bar of ten years for those unlawfully present for more than a year

By 2001 the INS reported approximately 8,400 agents guarding America's borders—400 assigned to the 4,000-mile northern border and 8,000 assigned to the 2,000-mile southern border.

Employment Verification Process

Although the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) established a process by which employers could verify an applicant's eligibility to work in the United States, fraudulent documentation and employers who overlooked documentation in favor of "cheap labor" continued to be problems. In May 2003 the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting electronic filing of two of the most commonly submitted immigration forms, the Application for Employment Authorization (Form I-765) and the application used to renew or replace a "green card" (Form I-90). These two forms represented about 30% of the seven million applications filed annually with immigration authorities. IIRIRA authorized reduction of the number and types of documents used for identification and employment eligibility. As shown in the notes in Table 2.2, the INS took some steps to implement this policy by reducing the number of acceptable documents.

Many Aliens Detained in U.S. Jails

To allow for the construction of more detention facilities, Congress delayed the mandatory detention provisions of the 1996 laws until October 9, 1998. However, the INS continued to rely on county jails, federal prisons, and private lockups to accommodate the increasing number of detained noncitizens. Some aliens without criminal convictions, such as asylum seekers, were held with the nation's toughest criminals. A June 2003 report from Amnesty International charged that 5,385 unaccompanied immigrant children were detained by the INS in 2001 in facilities that also held juvenile offenders (United States of America: Unaccompanied Children in Immigration Detention, New York).

The average daily population of criminal aliens in detention between FY 1994 and FY 2001 grew from approximately 3,300 to 13,210 according to a December 19, 2001, statement made before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims by Joseph Greene, Acting Deputy Executive Associate Commissioner for Field Operations, and Edward McElroy, New York District Director, both of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS detainees were housed in a variety of facilities, including five that were owned and operated by the INS and others owned by state or local governments that contracted space to the INS. The median length of stay was reported by Greene and McElroy to be fourteen days, but cases of detainment lasting more than three years have been documented.