Former Colorado governor Dick Lamm, the head of the University of Denver's Institute for Public Policy Studies and the chairman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said agricultural employers came to him complaining about the crackdown when he was governor.
Lamm said that he believed the industry's arguments at the time and supported Reagan's amnesty for undocumented workers as a way to relieve pressure and get the border under control. Now, he said he wouldn't support that again: Pressure not to enforce border security and employment laws won out and illegal immigration problems got worse, not better.
Lamm places a large share of the blame on American businesses.
And where it needs to be. The politicians and business owners share the blame equally.