Conclusion

The Conclusion is a brief analysis of how the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) both conceded to and fragmented the Chicano/Mexicano immigrant rights mobilizations facilitated in part by the CCR. Signed by a Republican, it was the first mass amnesty act revealing the influence of the human rights components of Chicano/Mexicano organizing that activists in San Diego had taken part in formulating beginning in the late 1960s. Yet the act also marginalized the abolitionist position of the movement, giving concessions by providing amnesty to a subsection of undocumented migrants, while further militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. The chapter concludes with an analysis of two divergent responses by Chicano/Mexicano activists o the new law: those who invested their energies in politicizing and assisting undocumented migrants who qualified for the amnesty provisions of IRCA by working with immigration state mechanisms and other activists who continued to criticize the “carrot and stick” immigration policies and maintain the call to abolish immigration state apparatuses.