n America increased dramatically as that region struggled with a massive debt crisis and various regional conflicts. By 1983, one poll found that 90 percent of Americans favored immigration reform (Simpson 147).
To address this perceived crisis, Senator Alan Simpson (Republican from Wyoming) proposed a sweeping overhaul of America's immigration policy in 1984. According to Simpson, illegal immigration posed numerous dangers to the American way of life: lowered wages and working conditions, job displacement in the areas hardest hit (such as the Southwest), and widespread disrespect for the American legal system brought on by the overwhelming number of people who broke the law to enter the country (Simpson 152-53).
Simpson proposed a three-prong approach involving employer sanctions (a method already in use in Canada, West Germany, and France), a worker verification system, and increased enforcement of existing immigration laws. Employer sanctions were the core of the law, resting on the premise that illegal immigrants come to the U.S. to find work. The law sought to eliminate that enticement. Congress believed that sanctions would reduce the employers' incentive to hire illegal aliens, thereby cutting the availability of employment for unauthorized aliens. Presumably the incentive for illegal aliens to seek employment in the U.S. would decrease as well. As a result, illegal aliens currently in the United States would be encouraged to return home and those that might normally come would be discouraged from leaving home (Marinelli 833-34).
That blueprint was codified into law in 1986 when Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, the IRCA. The IRCA made it unlawful for any employer (whether an entity or an individual) to knowingly hire, recruit, or refer for a fee an undocumented alien (Nichols 511). Unlike other federal regulations, which exempt small businesses from enforcement by limiting application to entiti...