The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

In the waning days of the Carter administration, Kennedy proposed a Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, chose Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh to head it, and selected the reading materials that would guide it. Two of the Kennedy commission’s members, Republican senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Democratic congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky, sponsored the legislation that would become the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Simpson-Mazzoli aimed at a bold compromise. It legalized and offered American citizenship to illegal immigrants who could prove they had been resident in the United States for even the briefest of stays. A Special Agricultural Worker (SAW) program gave permanent residency to workers who could show they had done 60 days of farm work between May 1985 and May 1986, regardless of whether they knew any English or had any understanding of American civics. A quarter-million were estimated to be eligible for the program, but the documentation and testimonials it required were easily counterfeited: 1.3 million wound up using it. Those admitted came to well over 3 million in total.