A Reagan Legacy: Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants(An article from NPR, July 10, 2010)

NPR ^ | July 4, 2010 | NPR Staff

[bubbacluck]

Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. "It was in Ronald Reagan's bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here."

Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.

"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," he said.

----------------------------------------

"He was a Californian," Robinson says. "You couldn't live in California ... without encountering over and over and over again good, hard-working, decent people — clearly recent arrivals from Mexico."

That the U.S. failed to regain control of the border — making the 1986 law's amnesty provision an incentive for others to come to America illegally — would have infuriated Reagan, Robinson says.

"But I think he would have felt taking those 3 million people and making them Americans was a success."

[EBH]

...actually what Reagan attempted to do would have been OK, if Kennedy hadn't turned around in congress and gutted most of the enforcement of it.

GOP Immigration Stance Far From Reagan Reforms

While Reagan’s 1986 immigration reforms (search) can at least be called rational, they were a failure. Today, there are between 8 million and 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. The majority of them crossed our southern border and has found employment — illegal employment, but employment nonetheless. This is attributed to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s eventual gutting of the enforcement mechanism for Reagan's employer sanctions, and successive administrations refusing to give our Border Patrol the resources it needs to achieve its mission

I think we often lose sight of what should have been enforcement. This happens with many of our laws today. I hear people saying we should have a law for this or that...and when I tell them we do already they shake their head in disbelief.

[Cheetahcat]

“I liked Eisenhower’s method of dealing with this pestilence!

I only wish that they would’ve locked down the border with a fence after Operation Wetback...when the country still had a spine and stomach for such actions. California might even be a livable place today.”

We had one more chance after 9/11 but Jorge Bush blew it!

[SteveAustin]

I agree that we are picking our candidates apart over all sorts of things that took place in a different time and different context.

Illegal immigration wasn’t a big deal when you were talking about 100,000 coming across the California border 25 years ago, entering into a prosperous California that was begging for labor.

But with the home construction boom from 1995 to 2007 we allowed in millions and millions. Unsupportable numbers. The importance of the issue is far greater today.

[Brilliant]

Reagan agreed to amnesty on the condition that the border would be closed. That did not happen.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Does the candidate have fatal flaws or do I just not see eye to eye on certain non-critical issues?

Is the importation of 10s of millions of leftist voters, and the resulting total leftist control of all 3 branches of government forever, a "non-critical issue?"

I don't care about Perry being an ex-Dem. I do care about what he might do if he were POTUS.