America's Immigration Policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1995, is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His publications include Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times (with Magaly Sánchez R., 2010), Categorically Unequal: The American Strat i1⁄2cation System (2007), and Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigra tion in an Age of Economic Integration (with Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone, 2002). Following the landmark immigration reforms of 1965, which sought to eliminate the taint of racism from U.S. immigration law, America’s immigration and border policies took an increasingly restrictive turn. For the 1⁄2rst time, hard numerical limits were imposed on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. These limits were tightened in subsequent years, drastically reducing opportunities for legal entry from Mexico, our neighbor and the largest contemporary source of immigrants to the United States. Inevitably, these restrictions gave rise to mass undocumented migration.1 In response to the rising tide of apprehensions, U.S. policy-makers increased border enforcement exponentially, scaling up deportations to record levels. The immigration enforcement industry presently costs the U.S. government an estimated $18 billion per year; employs more than 20,000 Border Patrol Of1⁄2cers (an all-time high); and deports an unprecedented 400,000 undocumented migrants per year.2 Despite the astounding enforcement effort of the past several decades, net immigration from Latin America has only accelerated. From 1970 to 2010,