Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Morrison (D-New Haven) led the writing and passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, one of only two major immigration bills in American history to increase legal immigration.
At the Institution for Social and Policy Studies last month, he drew on his experience and knowledge of Congress to describe how to overcome the current inability to produce new legislation addressing who can come to the United States and what to do with the millions of unauthorized people who are already here.
“We really need to start small, start with things that everybody agrees aren’t working,” Morrison said. “Nothing builds confidence in the legislative arena more than success.”
The event was co-sponsored by the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and moderated by Bonnie Weir, a senior lecturer in global affairs, assistant dean for undergraduate education at the Jackson School, and founding co-director of the Program on Peace and Development at Yale University.
“It was a tremendous pleasure to bring one of the great reformers of immigration law to ISPS,” Weir said. “We must learn from the successes of the past if we are to navigate the current political environment and build a future for this country in which all parties are heard and everyone can contribute and feel welcome.”
Morrison described the 1990 bill as the second half of a reform project that began with a 1986 law signed by President Ronald Reagan, which created civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hired unauthorized immigrants and provided legal status for about 3 million people who had arrived in the country before 1982.
“I like to describe what happened in the 1980s as the reaching of a national consensus,” he said. “Update laws and make decisions about how people would get to come. And then when people came, they were immigrants, permanent residents, on the path to citizenship, with all the rights as Americans. They were joining our community. They weren’t outsiders. They weren’t just workers. They were also whole people.”
Morrison said that consensus quickly broke down in the 1990s and needs to be rebuilt, noting that most people accept the regular flow of large numbers of immigrants but reject what they feel is chaos, particularly at the southern border and regarding the many years it can take to resolve asylum and removal cases.
“I think it is one of the jobs of government to assure people we are on top of our responsibilities and are not allowing chaos to govern,” he said. “Have a plan and implement the plan. We can fight over the details of the plan. But we need to have a plan.”
