Congressional Politics of U.S. Immigration Reforms

Published date01 September 2013
Date01 September 2013
DOI10.1177/1065912912461307
Subject MatterArticles
Political Research Quarterly
66(3) 600 –614
© 2012 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912912461307
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Regular Article
How are legislative outcomes shaped when members of
Congress debate over a multidimensional issue?
Although there are many studies (Crespin and Rohde
2010; Koford 1989; Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Poole,
Rosenthal, and Koford 1991; Talbert and Potoski 2002)
that attempt to determine the number of dimensions in
roll calls, few studies have examined how dimensional-
ity affects legislative outcomes. One of the reasons for
this lack of interests in the role of dimensionality is the
shortage of a theory that provides a clear prediction of
the final outcome of multidimensional negotiations.
Once the chaos theorem (McKelvey 1976; Schofield
1978) demonstrated that in multidimensional negotia-
tions, all alternatives are possible outcomes, studies have
turned to the roles of legislative institutions and political
parties in explaining legislative outcomes (Shepsle
1979). As a result, the dimensionality of congressional
negotiations has often been treated as an endogenous
variable that can be manipulated by legislative institu-
tions and political parties. Although this is true in many
cases (see Riker 1986), one downside is that we seldom
examine the role of dimensionality in a systemic way.
In this article, I do so by examining negotiations on
immigration in Congress. Immigration debates in
Congress are a good case with which to examine the role
played by multidimensionality because immigration is
fundamentally a multidimensional—economic as well as
social—issue, as explained later. As such, immigration
has been a party-dividing issue that has prevented the
majority party from developing a coherent position on
immigration. Majority party leaders often tried to block
the debates on immigration in an attempt to avoid reveal-
ing the disunity of the party. Nevertheless, the increasing
salience of the issue has forced party leaders to allow open
debates on immigration, at least in 1986, 1996, and 2006.
These debates provide opportunities to investigate how
multidimensional negotiations in Congress shape legisla-
tive outcomes.
In doing so, this article contributes to solving a puzzle
in the immigration literature. One of the key characteristics
of immigration reforms in the United States is that legisla-
tive outcomes tend to be limited in the sense that they are
inconsistent with the preferences of the majority of the
American public. Public opinion polls consistently
show that a majority of the American public supports a
restrictive immigration policy. According to a Gallup
poll conducted in 1995, 62 percent of respondents
stated a preference for a decreased level of immigration.
Ten years later, the response was similar at 58 percent.
However, immigration reforms tend to have mixed
legislative outcomes. For instance, the 1986 legislation
461307PRQXXX10.1177/1065912912
461307Political Research QuarterlyJeong
1The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Gyung-Ho Jeong, Department of Political Science, The University of
British Columbia, C425-1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T
1Z1.
Email: gyung-ho.jeong@ubc.ca
Congressional Politics of U.S. Immigration
Reforms: Legislative Outcomes Under
Multidimensional Negotiations
Gyung-Ho Jeong1
Abstract
How are legislative outcomes shaped by multidimensional negotiations? Examining the legislative politics of U.S.
immigration reforms, I show how alternating coalitions in multidimensional negotiations produce centrist legislative
outcomes. In doing so, this article sheds light on a puzzling aspect of immigration policy—namely, the gap that exists
between public opinion and legislative outcomes. My investigation of major immigration bills in 1986, 1996, and 2006
shows that the multidimensional nature of immigration debates contributed to the lack of dramatic reforms, by allowing
legislative minorities to form alternating coalitions to block any dramatic changes.
Keywords
Congress, immigration, multidimensional negotiations, and agenda-constrained ideal point estimation

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