IRCA's Antidiscrimination Provisions: What Went Wrong?

After negotiating for fifteen years, why couldn't Congress build into its major illegal immigration bill adequate safeguards against new national origin and citizenship discrimination? One answer lies in the process through which Congress and interest group advocates negotiated IRCA's verification and redress provisions, the bill's main protections against discrimination. This essay concludes that, although it was foreseen that discrimination problems might arise from IRCA's “existing documents” verification provisions, members of Congress still agreed on these provisions to avoid difficult political questions. Restrictionists and liberals must engage in a dialogue aimed at developing verification provisions that will not be discriminatory.