Posted on 11/21/2014 10:16:44 PM PST by cakid1
Immigration - President Obama's Executive Action vs Ronald Reagan's Amnesty
Some have asked me, isn't what President Obama trying to do on immigration the same thing that President Ronald Reagan did back in the '80's?
What President Obama is proposing is Executive Action. (He is acting without Congress.) What Ronald Reagan did in 1986 was sign a law passed by Congress.
The Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which Congress approved was sent to President Reagan for his signature. It gave amnesty to three million illegal immigrants.
Hope that helps. http://bit.ly/1AvTipl
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC: Maddow made the same claim yesterday, Thursday, after Obama's 8 P.M. TV speech concerning his executive order concerning the work permits for at last 5,000,000 illegals.
Yesterday, Thursday, I responded to Maddow's claim that Obama was simply following in the footsteps of Reagan and Bush. Obviously, I disagreed with her reasoning.
Here is what I wrote:
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC argues that Obama was simply doing what Reagan did in 1986 and Bush did in 1990 with their executive orders.
Internet and World Wide Web: Obviously they did not exist in 1986 and 1990 as we know them today.
1. What Maddow conveniently forgets to mention is this: The World Wide Web and sites like Facebook and Twitter did not exist back in Reagan's and Bush's time.
2. My point is this: If the millions of computers that exist today also existed way back then in 1986 and 1990, along with sites like Facebook and Twitter, Reagan and Bush may have also been highly criticized for their executive orders concerning illegal immigration.
3. Also,MSNBC did not exist back then because cable tv was still working to get off the ground as millions of homes still did not have access to cable tv as we know it today.
4. Since MSNBC did not exist way back then, it means that Maddow would not be working there back then. Sarcasm.
5. Also, since Reagan and Bush were Republicans, Maddow, if she was on tv at the time, would probably be severely criticizing both of them for their unconstitutional executive orders back in 1986 and 1990.
6. Maddow also conveniently forgets this very important point: A lot us were not very happy with the 1986 Reagan immigration bill, but we were told that this bill would solve all our immigration problems forever and we could all then happily walk into the sunset and live happily ever after, so we reluctantly went along with the bill. How wrong we were, as we all know.
7. My point is this: If we knew then what we know now about how wrong Reagan's bill was, and we had the World Wide Web to voice our complaints about the Reagan bill, maybe we could have forced Reagan not to sign the 1986 immigration bill and any executive order that followed.
8. Maddow conveniently forgot to talk about this also: The United States was a far different place back in 1986 than it is today in 2014, and people were more relaxed then.
9. For instance, if one could go back in time, the California of 1986 would be barely recognizable as compareed to the California of 2014, because illegal immigration, mostly from Latin America, has changed California forever.
10. Also,back in 1986, Southern states such as North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee were not fighting an illegal immigrants invasion like they are today in 2014.
11. So, Maddow, it may appear to you that Obama is simply doing what Reagan did in 1986 and Bush did in 1990.
12. But in reality, the United States today---with the explosion of the Internet since 1986 and the suffocating illegal immigration from the southern border---is so different from Reagan's 1986 and Bush's 1990 that comparing Reagan's and Bush's immigration executive orders to Obama's executive order tonight is not only wrong, it is absurd, and because 1986 was so long ago in dog years, it is like comparing apples and oranges.
13. So Maddow, Obama's executive order must stand on its own merits. But the more we look at it, the more we realize that Obama is wrong, and his action goes against everything America holds dear. He is abusing the power of the Presidency. No doubt about it.
Reagan should have done executive amnesty in 1985 and then Pat Buchanan or Bill Clinton could have got rid of it in the 1990s as the beltway got a tiny bit more aligned with the views of voters on immigration. Bush would have kept it.
I think Simpson-Mazzoli originally claimed that there were only one million illegals who would be granted amnesty. In reality, it was 3 million. It was also one of Reagan’s regrets. In retrospect, he said he should have never signed the Act.
The GOPe’s response (or I should say lack of response) to Obama’s amnesty is despicable. The GOPe is only offering half-hearted verbal criticisms and pointless, futile lawsuit filings. These will do nothing to stop amnesty, Obamacare, or Obama.
Unless you are a big corporate executive campaign contributor, a K Street lobbyist, or a member of the Country Club set, the GOPe does not care about you.
That boob Maddow is just lying. No mention of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
The bit about Reagan's second thoughts is apparently a myth.
I think the freeper post from the Free Republic link in this Daily Caller opinion article says it best: “Reagan rarely made the same mistake twice.”
The author’s peroration is simply fatuous when he writes that the reason we’re having problems is that we “allowed” too few “illegal aliens” (Reagan’s phrase) rather than too many.
It’s just more of the ‘chicken v. egg’ false dilemma posed by amnesty supporters: “The system is broken. We must have ‘comprehensive immigration reform’”.
No, that’s B.S., as is most of this OpEd apparently.
What we must have is an executive branch willing to do its job and look out for what is best for America and Americans.
A few observations:
Reagan’s grand and compassionate gesture to the illegal alien population garnered no respect for he or his party as most all illegal aliens today support democrats.
How did Reagan’s experiment work out? The Center for Immigration Studies said in 2000:
“About 2.7 million people received lawful permanent residence (“green cards”) in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of the amnesties contained in the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. But these new INS figures show that by the beginning of 1997 those former illegal aliens had been entirely replaced by new illegal aliens, and that the unauthorized population again stood at more than 5 million, just as before the amnesty.”
It did not work out. Reagan’s policy failed. But Reagan had no precedent to work from and hence no hindsight. Today we have hindsight; plenty of it.
Reagan also had Congress backing him when he signed the Amnesty bill into law. But there was a very important condition attached to that bill and that was that the border would be secured so that millions of lawless aliens would never again need to be dealt with. It was a one-time shot.
And to get an inside baseball look at what Rawhide was thinking before he died in 2004 it’s a good idea to go back to the raging storm of comprehensive immigration reform of 2006 where a person writes of it, a person that knew Rawhide’s politics better than anyone, his son Michael:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1634185/posts?page=101
Reagan’s 1986 signing of the Amnesty Bill was supposed to end forever the problem of amassing millions of illegal aliens.
Now the real question is: if illegal aliens having come to the USA over a time of loose border control, had availed themselves of the 1986 law to have themselves legalized, then what is the need now to legalize? If there are illegals today that were here in 1986, are they still in need of legalization? No.
Then who today is in need of legalization? The obvious answer is those in need today are a new crop of illegals that ignored America’s laws. This right here is an indictment on the 1986 law. It did not work then, it will not work now.
This is why Conservatives and almost all of the rest of American society are up in arms about what the democrats, Obama and the GOP Establishment are doing today.
One of the things Simpson-Mazzoli did was add form I9 to the mountain of paperwork required of employers.
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