ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the attorney general,

00:07

every law office's biggest war buff.

00:12

All right, first up, the excerpt.

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:16

[ mumbling continues ]

00:19

All right, and now the question:

00:21

Immigration laws fundamentally changed in the 1980s

00:24

because they... what?

00:27

And here are your potential answers.

00:31

All right, what clues can we gather from this passage?

00:34

The term "alien" here refers to, no, not extraterrestrial,

00:38

an undocumented worker in the United States or someone who is

00:42

in the country without proper paperwork.

00:44

And in this excerpt, we see that the Immigration Reform and Control Act,

00:48

or IRCA, granted lawful temporary residence

00:51

if those aliens met certain requirements.

00:54

So let's keep these details in mind as we search for the answer

00:58

best describing the shift in policy at this time.

01:01

Did immigration laws fundamentally change in the 1980s because they A -

01:05

eliminated visa quotas?

01:07

Well, actually, the IRCA didn't change the allocation

01:10

of visa numbers at all, so that eliminates A and B.

01:12

Could these immigration laws have changed by D -

01:15

granting amnesty to all permanent residents?

01:18

Well, we saw in the excerpt that the IRCA did create a path for amnesty,

01:22

but that road was long and winding, containing many stipulations that immigrants

01:26

couldn't meet. So it isn't D, either.

01:28

That means U.S. immigration laws fundamentally changed

01:32

in the 1980s because they C -

01:34

levied penalties against employers of illegal immigrants.

01:38

The sponsors of the IRCA believed they could crack

01:40

down on undocumented workers if they made jobs scarcer for these individuals.

01:46

So under the new law, employers were punished and had to pay

01:49

big fines for employing anyone

01:51

living in the U.S. illegally who was on their

01:53

payroll. So that makes C the right answer.

01:55

And in fact, anyone hired for a job today fills out an I9 form,

01:59

which was created at this time to make sure every employer

02:02

could verify the residency status of his or her employees.

02:06

So remember, if you go in for an interview,

02:09

you better get dressed up to the I9s.

Full Transcript