Huddled Masses, Muddled Laws: Why Contemporary Immigration Policy Fails to Reflect Public Opinion

Recent polls show that most Americans want to reduce legal immigration. Yet Congress has refused to do so, and, in fact, increased immigration by more than 40 percent in 1990. Lee analyzes why recent public policy on immigration has failed to reflect public opinion.
In 1997 the United States accepted more legal immigrants than all other
countries combined. This large influx of newcomers, however, has alarmed
many Americans. Immigration is a controversial issue because it
intersects with the most contentious issues of our time:
multiculturalism, bilingualism, unemployment, crime, etc. Opinion polls
since 1965 show that a strong majority want to reduce immigration. Yet
our government has refused to respond to the public's wish. In 1996,
Congress scuttled a proposal to reduce immigration by a third. (Earlier,
in 1990, Congress voted to increase immigration by a whopping 40
percent.) This is all the more surprising because the United States has
had no qualms about severely restricting immigration in the past.