"The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was a manifestation
of widespread public concern over the volume of undocumented
immigration into the United States. The principal innovation of this
legislation-the provision to impose penalties on employers who knowingly
hire undocumented immigrants-was a response to this concern.
This effort at restriction was tempered in IRCA by other provisions
permitting the legalization of two types of undocumented immigrantsthose
who had resided in the United States since January 1, 1982; and
what were called special agricultural workers (SAWs), persons who had
worked in perishable crop agriculture for at least 90 days during specified
periods from 1983 to 1986. Approximately 3.1 million persons sought
legalization (what is popularly referred to as amnesty) under these two
provisions. The breakdown was roughly 1.8 million under the regular
program and 1.3 million as SAWs. Mexicans made up 75 percent of the
combined legalization requests."

Kate Darian-Smith is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and President of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. A historian and interdisciplinary scholar, Kate has published widely on the histories of social and cultural change in Australia, including in the areas of migration, media, children, memory studies, oral history and cultural heritage.

Sue Turnbull is a Senior Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong. She has published extensively on media audiences and television and her most recent book with Marion McCutcheon is Transnational TV Crime: From the Nordic to the Outback (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Sukhmani Khorana is a Scientia Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Media at UNSW. She is the external co-lead of the Migration, Im/mobility and Belonging research theme at Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, University of Sydney. Sukhmani has published extensively on media diversity, mediated emotions and refugee narratives.

Kyle Harvey is a historian based in Melbourne. His research explores culture, media and social change in Australia and the United States, and he has published widely on television history, migration, social movements and radical thought. Kyle is the author of American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975-1990 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).