How did that happen? Do you have any idea or the exact details of what transpired? Or are you just regurgitating crap you picked up from liberal commentators and professors?
Former Attorney General Ed Meese has recalled many times how Reagan did not like the amnesty provision and, in fact, “called it for what it was.” Nevertheless, on November 6, 1986, Reagan signed the bill, which also included (as he noted in remarks made during the signing) “employer sanctions [and] other measures to increase enforcement of the immigration laws. . .”
“The lesson from the 1986 experience is that such an amnesty did not solve the problem,” Meese wrote in HUMAN EVENTS earlier this year, “There was extensive document fraud and the number of people applying for amnesty far exceeded projections. And there was a failure of political will to enforce new laws against employers. After a brief slowdown, illegal immigration returned to high levels and continued unabated, forming the nucleus of today’s large population of illegal aliens.”
Meese’s view of a “failure of political will to enforce new laws” was seconded and elaborated upon by Tony Snow last week. As he told me, “[I]f you take a look, for instance, at Simpson-Mazzoli, John, what was the punishment for crossing the border illegally? There was none, zero. For employers, the punishment ranged from a $250 fine to, I believe, a maximum of $2,000. Basically, fairly insignificant measures against employer, when it came to knowingly hiring and sheltering illegals, and obviously, you did not have the sort of support at the border to try to reduce the flow. You didn’t have the deployment of the National Guard forces — I mean, Border Patrol forces — I mean, Border Patrol units, and so on.” [Specifically, Simpson-Mazzoli required $250 to $2000 for each alien hired; in a second offense the employer would be subject to a $200 to $5000 civil penalty per alien found; subsequent offenses called for $3000 to $10,000 fines and possibly a prison term for a “pattern or practice” of violations.)