 [American Thinker] America's "unchecked immigration is a threat to our ability to hold together as a people, our ability to maintain the Unum while honoring the Pluribus," writes Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow Jerry Kammer. His new book, Losing Control: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash that Elected Trump, insightfully documents America's complex, longstanding politics behind a modern immigration morass.
The Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Kammer notes that "while I favor clear limits and enforcement that is both humane and firm, I celebrate immigrants as a vital part of our national story." Yet, like centrist-conservative commentators such as Reihan Salam, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, and Andrew Sullivan, Kammer emphasizes that American national cohesion demands an immigration "pause." Tellingly, after the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, America's immigrants grew from 9.6 million to about 47 million in 2020, while illegal alien, about 3.5 million in 1990, peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million.
The "liberal restrictionist" Kammer focuses on the unfulfilled promise of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to stop illegal immigration. ICRA "has proved to be one of the most consequential failures of governance in American history." Accordingly, "I support a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a generous amnesty if — and this is a big if — Congress ensures that it will not repeat the failure of IRCA."
By contrast, a booming fake document industry following ICRA has meant that illegal alien "workers could pretend to be legal, and unscrupulous employers could pretend to believe them," Kammer notes. Past proposals, such as in 1994 to create a Social Security number verification program, have run afoul, among others, of civil libertarians and free-market conservatives worried about "Big Brother totalitarianism." "Republican insider, free-market advocate, and Microsoft lobbyist Grover Norquist orchestrated a protest that likened the proposal to Nazi dehumanization of Jews," Kammer writes. 
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