Opinion: Politics of a 1996 immigration law locking millions in

My client “Samantha” didn’t call the police when her husband broke her wrist.

A police report asks for your name, and Samantha has spent 11 years hiding hers. She feared that calling for help could end with her deported. So she said nothing. Yet, she wakes each day, goes to work, contributes, returns home and takes care of her family since she has many depending on her.

Samantha isn’t reckless, and she isn’t rare. She is exactly what you would get if you set out to design a law that keeps millions of people hidden. That law turns 30 this year.

On Sept. 30, 1996, a Republican Congress and a Democratic president enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It was one of the last major immigration overhauls Congress has passed, and it created a new penalty : Live here without permission for a year, then leave, and face a 10-year ban on returning.

The bet: Make the punishment harsh enough, and people will leave.

They didn’t. About 5.7 million undocumented immigrants lived in the U.S. in 1995. By 2023, about 14 million did, a record, including about 300,000 in Arizona. The law was built to push or keep people out. But, it locked them in.

The problem: The penalty for violating the law kicks in only when you leave. Going home to apply the “right” way is what triggers the punishment. There is a waiver, but only for people who can prove extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen or green-card-holding spouse or parent. An American child doesn’t count. Neither do 20 years of paying taxes or a clean record.

In over a decade representing immigrants in Arizona, I have met thousands of people stuck this way. Another client, “David,” works shifts he is never paid for and says nothing, because his boss knows he has no status and uses it against him. This hidden population is easy to exploit. More than 80,000 applications from people seeking protection as trafficking victims are waiting at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A country needs rules, and rules need consequences. I spent 20 years as a military spouse. Nobody has to convince me that the rule of law matters. That’s why this law should bother us. A good law gives people a way to constructively and safely comply. To be good citizens. This one punishes people when they try to do the right thing.

The fix is to reward the behavior we want. Congress should let people earn a waiver through character and contribution: years of taxes paid, a clean criminal record, and work or service in their community. We already apply a version of that test to Dreamers, whose DACA protection requires school or military service and a clean record.

Nothing would be forgiven automatically. Applicants would still be fingerprinted and thoroughly vetted, and the government could still have the option to say no. But they would come forward, known and taxed instead of many who live hidden, in the shadows and off the books.

This matters for Arizona’s economy, too. U.S. births fell again last year, to about 3.6 million, and baby boomers are retiring. It takes 21 years to raise a 21-year-old worker. The people locked in the shadows are already here, already working and already raising American kids and often caring for elderly family members.

We are asking Arizona’s congressional delegation, Republicans and Democrats alike, to live in possibility and take the lead. Thirty years ago, Congress locked the door and called it reform. It’s time to unlock it.