Immigration "Reform." Immigration "reform" was the announced goal of Congress in the
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. It
sought to control immigration by placing principal responsibility on employers; it set-fines
for knowingly hiring an illegal alien.However, it allowed employers to accept many different
forms of easily forged documentation and subjected them to penalties for discriminating
against legal foreign-born residents. To win political support, the act granted amnesty to illegal aliens who had lived in the United States since 1982. Predictably, the act failed to reduce the flow of either legal or illegal immigrants.