ting the silence largely to a weariness among legislators following the struggles in Congress over the 1986 Immigration Act. For instance, former Colorado governor Richard Lamm, who warned that a splintering of American society could result from continued large-scale immigration, himself proposed an annual aggregate limit of 400,000--only 25 percent below the actual level of the late 1980s (Muller, 1993, p. 157). In addition, the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) also favored modest reductions but did not actively oppose the 1988 Kennedy-Simpson Senate bill that also sought to raise immigration levels. Muller argues these groups likely recognized that any proposal for reducing entry levels during the booming 1980s would lack political support given America's history of tolerance (Muller, 1993, p. 158).
While Americans have become more tolerant, increased numbers of immigrants during the 1970s and 1980s did prompt anxiety among various sectors of the nation. The anxiety is usually directed at the entry of undocumented aliens, and legislation passed by Congress in 1986 was an attempt to deal with the situation. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) penalized employers of illegal aliens, boosted Border Patrol strength, and screened illegals from welfare rolls (James, 1991, p. 28). Although it sparked a fairly wide-ranging movement for immigrant and refugee rights, its passage was widely recognized as a major blow not only to the immigrant communities but also to labor and civil rights (Tactaquin, 1992, p. 139). The Act, however, was primarily aimed at addressing concerns over undocumented aliens, or illegals, and thus did not address issues in the public arena concerning policies surrounding legal immigration.
The issue of illegal immigration, dormant since the mid-1950s, came to the fore again in the 1970s when the stream of undocumented Mexicans and other Latin Americans over the southern border...