In 1986, however, the pattern of circular migration ended after Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, or IRCA. Upon doing so, Reagan hailed: Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship.
One of IRCAs primary measures was to increase the enforcement budget of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As a result, crossing the national boundary became a much more dangerous and expensive enterprise. To avoid detection, migrants had to pay smugglers to help them get across hazardous terrains that were less patrolled.
Despite the new hardships of migration, relatively few Mexicans reconsidered their decision to head north. On the contrary, the numbers of undocumented migrants continued to grow. While in 1986, an estimated 3.2 million unauthorized migrants lived in the United States, the number reached 5 million in 1996, and grew to approximately 11 million in 2006. Despite the increased fortification of the border, Mexicans continued going to the United States because of economic need. After all, the passage of IRCA did nothing to alter the low wages and high underemployment rates in Mexico. However, as sociologist Douglas Massey and others have shown, as crossing the border became increasingly hard after 1986, most migrants started refraining from going back and forth between the two countries and instead decided to settle permanently in the United States.
