[generally]

Amnesty was my least favorite thing about Reagan.

I wasn’t paying close enough attention at the time, but my impression is that he was sucker punched by democrats. Give us amnesty and then we’ll close the borders. As soon as the democrats get what they want, the deal is over. Part 2 (close the borders, build the wall, crack down on illegals) never happens.

[WatchungEagle]

Your is impression is completely wrong. Reagan advocated amnesty and open borders in the primary before he was elected. He was the driving force behind the 1986 amnesty. The WSJ played the biggest role pushing the amnesty and open borders in the media during the 80’s. Democrats were divided on amnesty until after 2000. As recently as 2000, the NYT editorial page was against amnesty. It was only after Dubya tried to get another amnesty that most Democrats dropped their objections to it.

[hinckley buzzard]

The 1986 amnesty bill was signed by Reagan after years of relentless lobbying from Republican asshole senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, a Washington RINO and Cheyenne conservative. Reagan said at one time, he signed the damn bill just to get Simpson to shut up. And yes he was back stabbed because the bill promised border security to stanch the flow of illegals, but which never happened.