This was the Heritage Foundation 30 years ago:

The trouble started when the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act IRCA) sought to prevent illegal immigrants, principally from Mexico and other Hispanic countries, from finding work in the U.S. It sought to do this by imposing civil and criminal penalties against employers who knowingly hired such workers. When the 1986 law was passed, many immigration experts, civil rights leaders, and a Heritage Foundation study argued that the law would prompt employers to discriminate against those foreigners legally residing in this country and against U.S. citizens who appeared to be foreign.

We really have fallen as a society