Romano Mazzoli, who oversaw major immigration reform, dies at 89

He then reached across the Capitol — and across the aisle — to his counterpart in the Senate, Alan Simpson, about making fundamental changes to the creaking immigration system. More than 3 million immigrants lived in the country illegally at the time, thanks in part to poor enforcement.

Both politicians had personal motivations.

Mr. Mazzoli’s father, also named Romano, had moved to Louisville from a small town in northern Italy. And Simpson, as a child, had seen the animus aimed at the children of nonwhite immigrants when he befriended a Japanese American boy — and a future congressional colleague — named Norman Mineta, who had been sent to a Wyoming internment camp during World War II.

Mr. Mazzoli and Simpson developed a grand compromise: amnesty for millions of immigrants combined with penalties for employers and other forms of enforcement to reduce future inflows.

What followed was one of the longest legislative sagas in recent congressional history — a “roller-coaster odyssey,” Mr. Mazzoli called it. The Senate proved to be relatively amenable to the bill, but its House version, which had enemies on both sides, failed repeatedly. Pundits and politicians wrote its eulogy many times over, often with relief or even glee.

Some powerful members in Congress, including House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill of Cambridge, 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 reform failed in 1982. It came close to passage in 1984 after 51 hours of House debate that included Representative Jim Wright of Texas proposing rudimentary English as a requirement for legal status.

“That might disqualify some members of Congress,” quipped Representative Barney Frank of Newton.

Mr. Mazzoli 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.”

Mr. Mazzoli finally got the House version passed, after spending a lonely few days bouncing around the chamber floor rallying allies.

“I used to be 6-foot-7 until they kept pounding me down,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “Then I became 5-foot-9.”

But even that wasn’t enough. The two chambers failed to reconcile their versions in conference, and the bill died once again.

It finally passed in 1986, with significant alterations in the details but still in keeping with the original Simpson-Mazzoli framework. President Reagan signed it that fall.

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

The legislation, called the Immigration Reform and Control Act, was the last successful effort to change the country’s immigration laws. But its flaws emerged almost immediately.

Mr. Mazzoli was among its earliest critics, pointing out that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was underfunded and appeared not to have made the law’s enforcement aspect a priority. In addition, fraud was rampant, and illegal immigration surged.

Still, the bill stands as a landmark of bipartisan compromise, the sort that later generations of legislators could only dream of.

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

“There are narrow voices in our midst preaching a certain siren song of exclusion,” he 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.’ “

Romano Louis Mazzoli was born on Nov. 2, 1932, in Louisville. His father, a tile layer with his own business, had arrived in the city as a boy from Maniago, in northern Italy. His mother, Mary (Iopollo) Mazzoli, who was born in Cleveland, kept her husband’s books.

After graduating in 1954 from the University of Notre Dame, he was drafted into the Army, where he was assigned to keep minutes during administrative and legal hearings in Alaska. That experience persuaded him to become a lawyer.

He graduated first in his class from the University of Louisville School of Law, then worked for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and in private practice.

He married Helen Dillon in 1958. She died in 2012. He leaves a son, Michael; a daughter, Andrea Doyle; and four grandchildren.

By the late 1960s, Mr. Mazzoli was growing bored with the low-level legal work he was being assigned. One day in 1966 he wandered into the local Democratic Party headquarters, and within a few weeks he was a candidate for state Senate.

He won that race. In 1969 he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Louisville. In 1970 he ran for Congress and defeated the Republican incumbent, William Cowger, by just 211 votes.

Though he was a loyal Democrat, he cut an independent streak. He was a strident opponent of abortion and in 1979 introduced a constitutional amendment to make the procedure illegal.

He was also a critic of the surge of money into House races. He refused to take money from political action committees or any donation over $100. He decided not to run for reelection in 1994 in large part because he was tired of the constant fund-raising.

Mr. Mazzoli then returned to private practice. He also taught classes at the University of Louisville and Bellarmine University, a Roman Catholic institution in Louisville.

After spending time as a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2002, he returned, at age 70, to the Harvard Kennedy School the next year as a full-time master’s student.

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.”

Among his new young friends was Pete Buttigieg. The two graduated together in 2004 and remained close friends. When Buttigieg became mayor of South Bend, Ind., in 2012, Mr. Mazzoli officiated the swearing-in ceremony.

Material from The Washington Post was used in this obituary.