Millions of people are always crossing the borders of the United States as immigrants. To curb illegal immigration in 1986, the then government under the stewardship of President Ronald Reagan established the Immigration Reform and Control Act. It provided amnesty to all skilled illegal immigrants who were in the country before 1 January 1982 (Hanson, 2005, p. 347). The amnesty period was to last until 1988. By the end of the amnesty period, more than 3 million illegal immigrants had successfully applied for amnesty (Hanson, 2005, p. 347). However, the act even though effective in handling a large number of illegal immigrants, failed to provide a legal procedure for those unskilled and manual-skilled immigrants who wanted to enter the country. …show more content…
His first work was cracking down on illegal immigration at the U.S. border (The White House, 2015, par.5). Any person attempting to cross the border illegally faced the full force of the law. So as to prevent the breakdown of families caused by the U.S. immigration laws, President Obama’s second executive action involved the deportation of felons and not their families. The president focused on only deporting people considered a threat to national security like terrorists. Moreover, to ensure accountability, the president's third executive action provided that undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States for more than five years and had children born in the country were to be registered and undergo criminal and national security background checks (The White House, 2015). The people who pass the tests were to start paying their fair share of taxes and stay in the United States for three years without the fear of deportation. The undocumented immigrants who arrived as children before January 2010 would receive legal permanent residency. The action provided undocumented immigrants a legal means of earning American citizenship (The White House, 2015). However, even though these laws have tried to streamline positively immigration in the U.S., illegal immigrants, and their families have experienced negative repercussions of the