John Cornyn: “The June 18 article says: The most sweeping effort to halt illegal immigration in American history, the 1986 overhaul of…”

“The June 18 article says: The most sweeping effort to halt illegal immigration in American history, the 1986 overhaul of immigration law, may have cut the flow of illegal aliens less than expected and may have actually encouraged unlawful entry in several ways. It quotes a professor Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California in San Diego: We found no evidence that the 1986 immigration law has shut off the flow of new undocumented migrants. The article, dated November 12, 1989, includes a quote from the junior Senator from New York, who was then serving in the House of Representatives. It says: Representative Charles E. Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat who was an author of this Special Agricultural Worker provision, said that in retrospect the program seemed ``too open'' and susceptible of fraud. But he argued that the budget decisions had made the battle to combat fraud more difficult. In other words, alluding to the fact that notwithstanding the policy decisions made by Congress in 1986, that, in fact, it was the failure to actually finance and implement the policy for work site verification and employer sanctions that contributed to the ineffectiveness of the 1986 amnesty. I hope we will learn from the mistakes of the past and are not condemned to relive them with this bill.…”