Unintended Consequence #1: the Growth of the Immigrant Population

rizona’s controversial immigration law is emblematic of a new period in American immigration history that features a rampedup commitment to reduce illegal immigration and to establish a new “illegal class” of those who have already entered the United States. The debate about changes to immigration law is often framed as a moral, ethical, or legal issue, but the facts behind this debate are not well known and are often quite perverse. There are four such perversities in particular that we stress. First, over the last two decades, the United States has followed policies that, contrary to their intent, have actually increased the size of the unauthorized immigrant population. In spite of the fact that lawmakers devised policies aimed at reducing the number of unauthorized immigrants, the consequences have run contrary to their intended outcome. Second, there has been a dispersion of the immigrant population into new destinations and regions that is a direct consequence of our immigration policy, not some organic or inevitable development. Although the geographic dispersion of immigrants has a complicated set of implications, not all of which are obviously harmful to immigrants or natives, it is nonetheless By Tomás R. Jiménez and LauRa López-sandeRs