The United States has a 2,000-mile border to the south with Spanish-speaking Mexico. There are 316 miles of fence, backed by Border Patrol surveillance, between the two countries ("INS: Sanctions"). In January 1996, Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants seeking to enter the United States from Mexico numbered 169,000 ("INS: Budget"). Illegal immigration has become a crisis in U.S. domestic politics and in U.S.-Mexico relations.
The hiring of non-union immigrants has been used as a major union-fighting strategy by the major agricultural business interests of the Southwest, which dominate state politics. Indeed, this tactic has spread beyond the confines of the Southwest, agribusiness, and the U.S.-Mexico situation. Consequently, American unions have felt greater and greater pressure from their memberships to come out on general principle in favor of more restrictive immigration policies ("Unions and Immigrants").
Concurrent with this development has been the growing crisis in the U.S. government over the safety net of the social welfare structure. Most of the current instruments of social welfare may have been set up during the Depression, but they reached their zenith of elaboration during the last days of the post-War boom, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That is, benefits and programs were established during a period of tolerance and economic prosperity. No one expected state and federal governments to run up a national debt into the trillions of dollars.
Now that it has happened, frightened American citizens and their political leaders are looking for solutions, of both the quick-fix and the long-term variety. Clamping down on immigrants who tax the social welfare system is an obvious target. According to a winter 1996 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of Republicans considering voting in the presidential primaries, 54 percent favor a "five-year ban on all legal and illegal immigration into the U.S...