UNINTENDED, BUT PREDICTABLE, CONSEQUENCES
Every time in history that the United States has tightened control on the border with Mexico, the result has been more permanent Mexican immigrants and fewer Mexicans who simply visit the U.S. to work or trade. That was true long ago, when the new barriers were as simple as a small fee or a health exam, and it's been true since the crackdowns of the late 1990s.
In the Sacramento Bee, columnist Dan Walters takes note of the most recent example:
Ironically, the major impact of Proposition 187 has been precisely the opposite of what its framers intended; it has actually increased the number of illegal immigrants in California.
Although its specific provisions were never implemented, its passage sent a message to politicians, including then-President Clinton and California's senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein. At her behest, the Clinton administration tightened up controls along California's border with Mexico, making it much more difficult to cross.
With immigrant guides (coyotes) demanding higher payments and the border-crossing routes stretching into the California-Arizona desert and becoming more dangerous, Mexicans who once came to California for seasonal work, especially in agriculture, but maintained their homes in Mexico, found it less dangerous and less expensive to remain in the state permanently. And they began relocating their families as well.
A new analysis by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, based on 2000 census data, finds that between 1990 and 2000 California's foreign-born residents expanded by nearly 40 percent, from 6.4 million to 8.8 million, and now make up a quarter of the state's population. Other studies have found that immigration and births to foreign-born mothers now account for virtually all of the state's net population growth. There's little doubt that the post-Proposition 187 border controls contributed to this sharp increase, which mostly came from Mexico.
The socioeconomic impacts have been immense, especially in the urban core of Los Angeles and in the farm communities of the San Joaquin Valley. Economist Phil Martin of the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues first charted the effects, noting that as California's overall economy boomed during the middle and late 1990s, poverty was increasing sharply in rural communities as they struggled to absorb year-round populations of immigrants.