Atlas of Hispanic-American History

400,000 H-5A visas would have been
issued annually to “essential workers”
who are nonagricultural or highly skilled
employees. The bill also allowed spouses
and children of the visa applicant to
legally join the person applying for the
visa in the United States. H-5A visas
were to allow foreign workers to perform
a job for initially three years, with a pos-
sible extension later.
The bill also toughened enforce-
ment policies by requiring employers to
certify an employee’s status through a
central database. Business owners who
hired illegal workers faced fines up to
$20,000 and up to six months in prison.
Despite these tough enforcement
mechanisms, the McCain-Kennedy bill
was widely condemned by conservative
members of Congress, and failed to win
passage. The most controversial aspect of
the McCain-Kennedy bill was that it
would have allowed aliens already in the
United States to pay a fine and their
back taxes and then stay in the United
States legally. To anti-immigration
forces, this amounted to an amnesty for
illegal immigrants. An alternate bill,
introduced by Republican Senators Jon
Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas
required illegal immigrants already in
the United States to leave the country
within five years and then reapply for
legal status. That bill also failed to pass.
Although conservatives praised the
Kyl-Cornyn bill as an improvement,

many argued that it did not adequately

address illegal entry at the border.

Increasingly, anti-immigration forces

called for an extended border fence that

would run the full 700 miles along the

U.S.-Mexico border. Proponents of the

border fence pointed to a 14-mile stretch

of fencing built by the federal govern-

ment along the San Diego-Tijuana bor-

der during the 1990s. Prior to the

construction of that stretch of fence, the

San Diego-Tijuana region was of the pri-

mary points of illegal crossings, as just a

single strand of cable served as the border

marker for much of the 12-mile stretch.

Today, that cable is gone, replaced by a

triple fence system made up of, first a 10-

foot high wall made of welded metal pan-

els and then a 15-foot high steel mesh

fence. In some of the most heavily traf-

ficked parts of the San Diego-Tijuana

area, there’s also a smaller chain link

fence. Between the two main fences is

150 feet of “no man’s land” which the

U.S. Border Patrol sweeps with flood

lights, trucks, and surveillance cameras.

Since this fence system appeared, appre-

hensions of illegal immigrants have

dropped from about 100,000 a year to

only about 5,000 a year.

It is this success that led anti-immi-

gration activists to call for a similar fence

that runs the full 700 miles between the

United States and Mexico. Despite his

initial opposition to such a fence, just

before the Congressional elections of

HISPANIC AMERICA TODAY 223

Male

Female

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

U.S. Born

Citizen

Naturalized

Citizen

Legal Status

Percentage of Crop Workers

Legal Permanent

resident

Unauthorized

56%

39%

21%

24%

2% 3%

20%

33%

Legal Status of Migrant Workers by Gender