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“In fact,” notes Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute, “under the ‘Texas Proviso’ inserted into the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act at the behest of the Texas delegation, authorities were explicitly prohibited from prosecuting employers for hiring them. Thus, millions of Mexicans were able to enter the United States during this period and work for U.S. companies and farmers without significant fear of government interference. ” In effect, a de facto guest-worker program had replaced the Bracero policy. Restrictionists like to blame the 1965 repeal of immigration quotas for today’s influx of Mexicans, but those quotas never applied to Mexico. It was the 1965 law that put in place quotas on Mexico and other countries in the western hemisphere for the first time. And it launched a new era of illegal immigration from Latin America. In the 1970s alone border apprehensions rose five-fold.

HOMELAND SECURITY

At least since the mid-1980s, restrictionist policies have reigned supreme. The federal government has steadily invested more money and effort to stop illegal immigration through various enforcement measures. Ed Meese, Alan Simpson, and other leading opponents of immigration at the time, heralded the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act (ICRA). They demanded sanctions for employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens, and ICRA provided them, along with a new false-document industry that continues to grow.

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. But even as we liberated the cross-border flows of capital, goods, and services, we persisted in trying to stop the free movement of people. At the urging of Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, among others, the 1990s saw a tripling of the border patrol. In addition, the Clinton administration initiated Operation Hold the Line, Operation Blockade, and Operation Gatekeeper, which involved planting patrols, three-tier fences, remote-control cameras and motion-detection devices along the more popular corridors for illegals, such as El Paso and San Diego. It didn’t work. For all our troubles, illegal immigration still rose by 5.5 million people between 1990 and 2000.

To this day, we continue emphasizing enforcement above all else. By 2002, the border patrol’s budget was $1.6 billion, a ten-fold increase over 1986. Over the same period the number of hours spent patrolling the border grew by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, between 480,000 and 660,000 illegal immigrants were entering the United States each year.

When President Bush took office in 2001, we had about 9,000 border patrol officers. The number increased by 50 percent to 13,500 in 2007, and the administration aims to double it by the end of Bush’s term. Bush’s 2008 budget called for spending $13 billion to strengthen border security and immigration enforcement. That includes $1 billion to build fences and virtual barriers. Since 2001, Congress has increased funding for border security by 145 percent. “We will have 370 miles of fence built by the end of 2008,” Michael Chertoff told me. “We’re also developing the first stage of what will ultimately be an across-the-border virtual technology fence, and in the interim we’ve had the border patrol augmented by the National Guard.”

In 2005, Congress even flirted with the idea of making illegal immigration a felony, though eventually decided against it. Representative James Sensenbrenner led the effort. He wanted all 12 million illegal aliens in the country recategorized as felons, which would disqualify them from ever gaining legal status and automatically make them deportable. Then someone reminded Sensenbrenner that these wouldn’t be simple deportation hearings. People in the United States who have been charged with a criminal offense are entitled to a lawyer and a day in court. Learning of these complications, Sensenbrenner backed off.

Many people mistakenly believed that being in the country illegally is already a criminal act. It is not and never has been. It’s a civil violation, like a traffic infraction. Being here without authorization is certainly