Undocumented Migration to the United States.

• Author: Cebula, Richard J.

This book concerns itself with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This legislation is purported to represent a major revision of U.S. immigration policy and has as its apparent goal the reduction of illegal immigration. As noted at several points in the book, IRCA seeks to achieve its goal with two basic strategies: (1) the legalizing of immigrants already residing in the U.S. and (2) the reduction of future flows of illegal migrants to the U.S. by imposing penalties on employers in the U.S. who hire illegal aliens. This book of studies attempts to address the issue of whether IRCA has in fact successfully reduced illegal immigration.

This book consists of nine chapters, written by a variety of authors. A variety of data sources are adopted in the analyses, along with a diversity of methodologies. To start the project off, the editors provide a useful and brief "introduction", which serves to set the stage for the remainder of the book. Among other things, this introduction distinguishes between persons who enter the U.S. without any form of legal visa (these people are called "EWIs" since they "enter without inspection") and persons who enter the U.S. with legal visas but stay beyond the authorized time limit (these people are called "visa overstayers").

Chapter one is by the editors as well. Here, the authors examine the more recent pattern of efforts to estimate the magnitude of the U.S. undocumented population. In so doing, they observe that press reports as to the magnitude of the U.S. illegal population have often been exaggerated. They document as well the fact that estimations of the "... size of the illegal population have varied greatly over the past two decades" |p. 16~.

In chapter two, authors Woodrow and Passel investigate the impact of IRCA on the volume of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. The authors adopt a residual methodology involving the subtraction of an estimate of the legal population from the Census or CPS estimate of the foreign-born population to get a measure of the magnitude of the undocumented component. They find that IRCA has decreased the undocumented population of the U.S., but they determine that this decrease is due solely to the legalization of formerly illegal residents in the U.S. They detect no compelling evidence that IRCA's employer penalties have induced out-migration of undocumented residents.

In chapter three, Warren provides annual estimations of the volume of people...