For many immigrants in the United States the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) changed their lives. It is also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act and was signed on November 6, 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. First, the act made it illegal for employers to willingly hire illegal immigrants or to recruit them. Doing so would be breaking the law and would result in fines and penalties. Second, employers were mandated to verify the immigration status of their employees. This resulted in the introduction of the I-9 form which required specific documentation to be presented to employers at the time of hiring. The documentation would serve as proof of their legal status in the United States and both employer and employee would sign off on the form. Only employers with three or more employees and those who had not been making an adequate effort to verify the legal status of employees would be required to use the I-9 Form. These sanctions would be monitored closely for discrimination by the General Accounting Office (now known as the Government Accountability Office). If discrimination was found to be widespread among the employers as a result of the sanctions, the General Accounting Office would repeal the employer sanctions. Lastly, the act granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who came to the United States before January 1, 1982. However to qualify the illegal immigrant must have lived here continuously after they entered the United States. A simple oral declaration that the illegal immigrant had been in the United States before the established deadline and had lived here thereafter was not accepted. The illegal immigrant had to submit an application along with paperwork to prove they had resided here.

Approximately three million illegal immigrants qualified for the 1986 amnesty and many took advantage of the program. It was a dream come true. Nearly 1.7 million illegal immigrants became permanent residents. Many more family members and spouses were able to gain permanent residency by being sponsored at a later date. Most who took part in the amnesty program were honest immigrants yet some did manage to obtain permanent residency using fraud and get away with it. Under a similar amnesty program for agricultural workers in the late 1980s greater than 90% of the applicants were approved. For this agricultural program about 1.3 million applications were received. In nearly 33% of the cases some type of fraud was suspected. Some of the fraudulent documentation submitted may have been paycheck stubs and rent receipts. Critics of the 1986 amnesty suspect some applicants submitted fraudulent documentation as well. Looking back critics believe the IRCA did more harm than good. It granted amnesty to individuals who had been continuously residing in the United States and met certain criteria defined by the U.S. government. Critics saw this as a reward to those who had broken the law. The act was supposed to cut down on the number of illegal immigrants hired and punish employers for willingly hiring them but that it did not do. Instead of the borders becoming safer as President Ronald Reagan and Congress had envisioned, the number of illegal immigrants coming into the United States only grew.

In recent years immigration reform has been widely talked about and similar amnesties to that of 1986 have been proposed. They include stricter regulations like imposing significantly greater fines and requiring that back taxes be paid before permanent residency is granted. In addition, many proposals have been introduced to expand current guest worker programs. The government has been working on an electronic verification system that can be used by employers to better be able to differentiate those who are eligible to work in the United States legally. However, such system has flaws which will take a while to work out and some may never be worked out completely. Legislation that has been proposed also includes tougher border security to go along with it. While many agree that immigration reform is long overdue, U.S. Congress members cannot agree on the terms. Immigration reform continues to be a controversial topic. At the time of the 1986 amnesty about three million undocumented immigrants in the United States were eligible. Today with the number of illegal immigrants estimated at 12 million immigrants a similar amnesty could make ten million or so immigrants eligible. However because the IRCA was a failure in the eyes of some Congress members it is unlikely that a similar amnesty will soon be approved. “Failure” because it did not achieve what they had originally intended it to do. Many immigrants who took advantage of the amnesty opportunity beg to differ. It got them closer to the American dream and many are now proud American citizens.