Immigration, both legal and illegal, has risen near the top of the national public agenda in the 1990s. Immigration was, for example, a major issue in the 1996 presidential campaign, and is now the subject of major reform bills in Congress. But, the emergence of this issue was not a spontaneous event. Immigration control, and the treatment of immigrants once they arrive in the United States, reached this level on the public agenda through a combination of efforts by politicians and policy entrepreneurs.
Immigration control has always been a significant public issue, but, in recent decades, it has not been a particularly high-priority item. The current concerns over limiting immigration contrast strongly, for example, with the 1990 Immigration Act, which increased annual immigration levels (Immigration policy, 1995, p. 15). The issue has, therefore, been raised with some speed. Yet, there is very little agreement among those who worked to accomplish this. Their intentions, very often, conflict with each other, and legislators are hard-pressed to produce laws that satisfy any of these agents completely. In terms of agenda setting, the immigration issue raises the question of how a number of agents, with disparate concerns, placed the problem on the national agenda, and how legislation is being formulated in response to these concerns. What were the routes and processes involved, and who were the agents who placed immigration on the national agenda? How are these concerns being translated into laws, and what is the response of those who initiated the agenda setting process?
Since 1990, calls for limits on immigration, and for harsher treatment of current legal and illegal immigrants, have arisen from the perception of immigrants as threats to American jobs, to the homogeneity of American culture, and to overburdened systems of public aid. In some instances, objections are raised to illegal immigration simply because th...