ABSTRACT
Congress passed the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996,” and related provisions unfavorable to immigrants in the anti-terrorism and welfare laws, just as a wave of postwar anti-immigrant sentiment spread across the United States. The enactment of the immigration restrictions in these three statutes might have been possible only in the brief two-year life span of the 104th Congress.2 In 1993, 65 percent of Americans thought that immigration to the United States should be decreased; by 1997, even though Congress did not cut immigration quotas, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.3 What may have been a temporary spike in public distress about immigration coincided with the advent of the first Republican House of Representatives in forty years, a newly Republican Senate, the first term of a Democratic president elected by plurality who favored, or was at least reluctant to oppose, a “tough” immigration bill while running for reelection, and the last months in office of a popular Senate Immigration Subcommittee chairman whose state included few immigrants and who had made a career of trying to limit immigration. A month after Simpson left the Senate, he was replaced as chairman by Spencer Abraham, who had led the fight against Simpson’s effort to cut immigration quotas and had supported DeWine’s efforts to protect refugees.4 Had Abraham held the Senate subcommittee chairmanship during the 104th Congress, he would have been a member, and in fact a particularly influential member, of the Conference Committee. The bill that emerged would almost surely have been much more limited, at least with respect to its impact on potential asylum applicants.
