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38 German Y.B. Int'l L. 284 (1995)
Recent Trends in United States Migration Control

handle is hein.journals/gyil38 and id is 285 raw text is: Recent Trends in United States Migration Control By Gerald L. Neuman* I. The Current Environment For Western European countries, the end of the Cold War has produced changes both in the character of migration flows and in government and popular attitudes towards them. Where migrants from Communist countries were for- merly greeted as political refugees, migrants from post-Communist countries are more often regarded as economic migrants deserving rejection. Even refugees fleeing ethnic persecution or political repression often meet governments that deny they can afford to offer protection. These changes have multiple causes, but one is the divergence in the interests of refugees and of refugee-receiving States. The self-interest of Cold War rivals no longer reinforces the humanitarian pur- poses of refugee law. The experience of the United States in recent years confirms this diagnosis. The geographical position of the United States exposes it to different migration flows than Western Europe, including flows from two countries that have not yet become post-Communist, Cuba and China. But the opposition of systems no longer has the strategic importance that it once had. This fact is most starkly illu- strated by the changes in immigration policy toward Cuba between July 1994 and June 1995, as will be discussed later.1 The factual context of migration control in the United States also includes a longstanding problem of illegal labor migration. In 1986, the government at- tempted to respond to this problem by means of an amnesty program that has legalized nearly 2.5 million undocumented aliens, and by enacting civil and crim- inal sanctions on businesses employing aliens who are not authorized to work in the United States.2 The employer sanctions provisions, however, have been easy to circumvent, partly because the United States has thus far resisted adopting * The author wishes to thank Professors T Alexander Aleinikoff, David Cole, Randle Edwards, Harold Hongiu Koh and David Martin for informative discussions of issues trea- ted in this article. Any errors are the sole responsibility of the author. I This article was completed at the beginning of July 1995. 2 8 U.S.C. §§ 1255A, 1324A; US Department of Justice, 1991 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1992, 70.

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