- 1990:
o Immigration Act of 1990
§ Passed in response to the need for skilled workers in technical fields as well as the popular belief that many of the social and economic issues in the US were caused by non-English speaking, poor immigrants
§ Created a visa lottery system to promote diversity from underrepresented countries
§ Increased the number of legal immigrants allowed into the US each year from 500,000 to 700,000
§ Initiated the US Commission on Immigration Reform
· Recommended that the government focus on improving border enforcement by providing border officials with more training
· Eliminated non-emergency medical services for illegal immigrants
· Cracked down on employers hiring illegal workers
o Operation Blockade
§ Doubled the number of Border Patrol agents in the El Paso sector
§ Originally scheduled to last 2 weeks
- 1991-1993: The INS and Office of National Drug Control Policy commissioned the Sandia National Laboratory. In 1993, it determined INS strategy down of locating and apprehending illegal immigrants to be ineffective. By this time the INS budget had reached $1.5 billion.
- 1992: Number of illegal immigrants had increased to 3.4 million
- 1993:
o 904, 300 immigrants were accepted into the US
o Human traffickers were prosecuted for attempting to smuggle 276 illegal Chinese immigrants. This incident emphasized the fact that numerous Chinese immigrants were entering the US illegally.
- 1994:
o Los Balseros: Wave of Cuban migration via rafts. Due to the volume, the Clinton Administration announced that Cubans found at sea would no longer be brought to US soil but returned to Cuba. However, those who reached US soil would still obtain refugee status.
o NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was signed between the US, Canada and Mexico. The treaty created the world’s second largest trading area, second to the European Union.
§ Devaluation of the peso shortly after the treaty began
o Border Patrol revamped its strategy
§ New focus: Prevent illegal immigrants via deterrence
§ Goal: Push migrants into locations that were more remote and difficult in order to discourage crossing
§ More border patrol agents, technology, lighting and surveillance equipment
§ Operation Blockade in El Paso was expanded and renamed Operation Hold the Line
§ Operation Gatekeeper
· New strategic plan implemented at the Imperial Beach Border Patrol Station in the San Diego sector. Expanded to the entire sector which was the busiest crossing point at the time.
· Purpose: decrease the amount of immigrants crossing the border and shift the remaining traffic eastward where Border Patrol believed it had the advantage over would-be crossers
· Shifted operational emphasis from apprehension to deterrence and prevention
· Increased number of Border Patrol agents in the sector by transferring agents from other sectors
· New strategic plan: 3 tiers of agents
o 1st tier deployed in fixed position along the border
o 2nd tier located further north in popular corridors travelled by immigrants. Apprehended immigrants who made it past the first tier
o 3rd tier charged with apprehending illegal traffic that made it past both lines of defense
· New equipment: 4-wheel drive vehicles; night scopes; IDENT (new electronic fingerprinting system); seismic sensors; portable radios for agents to communicate with each other in the field
· 1996- Allegations of fraud
o Some agents accused their supervisors of faltering intelligence reports, conducting operations in a manner intended to mislead the public about the effectiveness of the operation and falsifying records
o Some agents suspected that the fixed positions were intended to decrease apprehensions
o Clinton Administration’s immigration law enforcement plan
§ Prioritized deporting criminal illegal aliens, encouraging illegal aliens to seek citizenship, increasing border security, and improving enforcement in the workplace
- 1996: Congress passed legislation authorizing hiring more Border Patrol agents over the next few years and mandating jail time for some criminal aliens
o Illegal immigrants who were deported could now be held in jail for up to 2 years until meeting before an immigration board
o Local law enforcement in border states was granted the power to deputize police forces to uphold immigration laws
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico704/history/timeline.html
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9807/gkp01.htm
“Grounding Immigrant Generations in History: Cuban Americans and Their Transnational Ties” by Susan Eckstein and Lorena Barberia.
Immigration in U.S. History Edited by Carl Bankston & Danielle Hidalgo
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