The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Romano Mazzoli, congressman who led last major immigration act, dies at 89

November 2, 2022 at 5:18 p.m. EDT
Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D-Ky.) joins House and Senate members to discuss immigration reform on Capitol Hill in 1984. From left: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.); Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.); Mazzoli; Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-N.Y.); and Rep. Peter Rodino, (D-N.J.). (Ira Schwarz/AP)
7 min

Former congressman Romano Mazzoli, a Kentucky Democrat who teamed up with a Republican senator in the 1980s to achieve the last major legislation in Congress on immigration reform, including granting legal status to nearly 3 million people, died Nov. 1 at his home in Louisville. He was a day short of his 90th birthday.

Mr. Mazzoli’s former chief of staff, Charles Mattingly, confirmed the death but did not give a cause.

The Simpson-Mazzoli Act — Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) was its co-sponsor— was a master class in bipartisan dealmaking and tenacity as Mr. Mazzoli and Simpson overcame political and industry opposition to proposals such as penalties for businesses that hire undocumented workers.

No other comprehensive immigration legislation has made it through Congress since the act was signed into law in 1986 — a 36-year span that underscores the huge challenges of reaching any common ground on immigration. The task is even harder because of the intense political polarization and shortcomings in the Simpson-Mazzoli Act that still resonate in current debates.

“Immigration is an economic, sociological, demographic and political issue, but it’s also a moral issue,” Mr. Mazzoli said in 2017.

Mr. Mazzoli was often a wild card within his party during his 24 years in the House, breaking ranks with Democrats on issues such as trade policies he considered too protectionist and abortion rights that conflicted with his Roman Catholic values. His drive to amend immigration rules also left him without a natural political coalition.

Some powerful members in Congress, including House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), did not favor such a broad amnesty for undocumented migrants. Industry lobbyists and agricultural groups opposed more aggressive moves to check employee status.

Bids for immigration revisions failed in 1982. Then there was another near miss in 1984 after 51 hours of House debate that included Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) proposing rudimentary English as a requirement for legal status.

“That might disqualify some members of Congress,” quipped Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Mr. Mazzoli, whose father emigrated from Italy, closed the House debate with a tearful reading of a letter from an undocumented migrant: “I beg you, sir, give me status as a human being.”

Simpson helped push through an amended version in the Senate in 1985 that eased some of the harshest sanctions on businesses over undocumented workers. The bill, officially known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed the House in October 1986 with the key provisions intact.

The act made it illegal for employers to knowingly hire or recruit undocumented workers, and it granted legal status to about 3 million seasonal workers and undocumented migrants who entered the United States before Jan. 1, 1982, and stayed without being convicted of a serious crime. It also created special visa categories for temporary workers in agriculture and other industries.

In November 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed it into law, saying it will “go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows.” In 1987, he issued an executive order extending legal status to the children of people covered by the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty.

During the signing ceremony, Vice President George H.W. Bush gestured to Mr. Mazzoli, who stepped forward to shake Reagan’s hand.

Proponents of the law hailed it as a significant step to plug gaps in the U.S. immigration system and shift some regulatory burdens to employers, hoping it would lessen the incentives for undocumented migrants.

Efforts to enforce the law were lax and underfunded, however, while some agro-businesses and others found loopholes by not directly hiring and using contractors to bring in workers. Undocumented migration continued to grow over the decades, statistics often cited by groups calling for tougher policing measures on the southern border.

Simpson-Mazzoli’s missteps also cast shadows over attempts to hammer out a broad-range immigration deal in Congress after President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, executive order in 2012, which blocked deportation of undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children younger than 16.

A 2011 analysis by the Migration Policy Institute said the Simpson-Mazzoli Act came up short on ways to keep a regulated flow of migrant labor into the country as the service economy swelled and the American workforce grew older and more selective on job-seeking.

Mr. Mazzoli never wavered in seeing help for migrants as an imperative of his faith.

“There are narrow voices in our midst preaching a certain siren song of exclusion,” Mr. Mazzoli told the Record, a Catholic community news site in Kentucky. “We have to be aware that there are siren songs of inclusion and we have to listen to those voices of inclusion and say, ‘This may be tough to talk about, but I know it’s right.’ ”

Election squeaker

Romano Louis Mazzoli was born Nov. 2, 1932, in Louisville, where his father worked as a tile layer. Mr. Mazzoli graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1954 and did a two-year stint in the Army. In 1960, Mr. Mazzoli graduated first in his law class from the University of Louisville and went into private legal practice.

He entered politics with an upset win over a favored Democratic rival for the Kentucky Senate in 1968, campaigning as a military veteran calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. After an unsuccessful bid for Louisville mayor, he won a photo-finish race in 1970 for Kentucky’s 3rd District, which included Louisville, by just 211 votes.

He won 11 more House races, becoming chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and international law in 1981. By the early 1990s, Mr. Mazzoli refused contributions from political action committees and took nothing above $100 as individual campaign donations.

“I don’t like labels,” he said in 1988. “I don’t consider myself anything but thoughtful.”

He announced his retirement from the House in 1994 and returned to law practice in Louisville and lectured at the University of Louisville’s law school.

His wife of 53 years, the former Helen Dillon, died in 2012. Survivors include two children, Michael Mazzoli and Andrea Doyle; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Mazzoli was invited in 2002 as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The next year, he was back — this time as a student pursuing a master’s degree in public administration.

When Mr. Mazzoli was 70, he and his wife moved into a second-floor dorm room in Lowell House near Harvard Square. They found no special trappings for a newbie older than most of his professors. It had two beds, two desks and no internet link. They had to wait like the others.

“I have to admit, as I was hauling things up the stairs, I said, ‘Am I crazy to be doing this at my age?’ ” he told The Washington Post. But they were soon in the groove of campus life, figuring out the best offerings in the dining hall and hosting fellow students dropping by to talk about politics.

“And marriage,” he told WHAS-TV in Louisville on how the couple dispensed advice on keeping a relationship going no matter what the circumstances.

“There’s nothing like 2 in the morning,” he recalled, “being awakened by rock music being played right above you.”