Posted On: Wednesday - May 3rd 2017 7:21PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity History Dead/Ex- Presidents
(Look at the evil elder Bush in the background. What a let-down he was!)
This post is appearing tonight, as the earlier post was about actors, and it reminded me to write about the 1986 illegal alien amnesty. Ronald Reagan, who was president then, did start out as an actor. Somehow, through a mystery of fate(?)when he was fairly young, he obtained some common sense and smart views about politics. Before he was US president ('81 - '88), and even for a decade before he was governor of California (mid-1960's) Ronnie was a fighter against Communism. He was no slouch in the writing department either, and a reading of his writings for his radio addresses back in the day makes any modern politician look like Beavis in comparison. OK, that was an exaggeration, more like Butthead.
OK, let's get something straight - Congress, both the House of Reps. and the Senate, together make laws, and the president can sign them or not. If not he can be overwritten by a much larger yes vote - 2/3 of the House AND 2/3 of the Senate.
The abomination called the Simpson-Mazzoli bill after its sponsors, was signed by President Reagan to finish making it into a law. He didn't write the bill. The phrase "Reagan Amnesty" has been used ever since, possibly just for convenience, but you don't all the other large botched-up POS bills being named after presidents, with the exception of "Obamacare".
PeakStupidity has a great respect for Ronald Reagan. Though we aren't ready for him to be a saint, exactly, as there are too many for the calendar already, we sure wouldn't mind possibly bumping out one of the more progressive saints for him. I doubt we will see that until this present Commie so-called "Pope" has voluntarily or forcefully (even better) been De-Poped with extreme prejudice. As to the subject, Mr. Reagan's name has been seriously de-smirched by that amnesty of 3,000,000 or so illegal Mexicans, the amount that were living in America in the mid-1980's (as opposed to the admittedly rectal-extraction based value of 25 to 40 million here now).
President Reagan's problem can be summed up simply - he was too trusting. Now, he was not naive enough to trust the Soviet Russians, as he had spent many years learning about the evils of Communism. However, he WAS naive enough to trust his opposition politicians in the US Congress. That caused him 2 big mistakes, one of which was the 1986 amnesty. There was a deal made, that this one-time (haha) amnesty would be done, but then real border security and enforcement of law against illegal alien employers would be implemented. From VDare, the best source on any of this stuff:
According to Ronald Reagan himself, as told to his trusted long-time friend and U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, the biggest mistake of his presidency was signing the 1986 amnesty for what turned out to be more than half the five million illegal immigrants in the country. Reagan was uncomfortable with the amnesty but was persuaded by some of the leaders of his own party (still living) that it would only affect a small number of illegal immigrants and would assure that Congress would follow through with more vigorous enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. The misnamed Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was touted by its supporters as “comprehensive immigration reform” that would grant amnesty only to a few long-settled immigrants and strengthen border security and internal immigration enforcement against employers who were hiring illegal immigrants.This quoted-by-VDare information, discussed in the article linked to here again is from an article that was in Conservative Heritage Times in January of 2012 (but the link in VDare returns nothing now). The entire part quoted in the VDare article by Allan Wall is so interesting, it may be another post coming.
Internal enforcement was critical to Reagan. He knew that the real key to stopping illegal immigration was to cut off the job magnet at the employment place. He was also honest enough to call what he believed would only be a small amnesty by its real name—amnesty. He did not try to deceive the American people into thinking it was not really an amnesty, a deception much in vogue with many politicians today.
From a site called "On The Issues", while trying to get a few more details, I saw:
Rising levels of illegal immigration [led to] the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). It provided amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants, in return for increased border security and penalties for companies "knowingly" hiring illegal immigrants. Aside from creating the H-2A visa for seasonal employment, IRCA failed to create new avenues for legal immigration. The combination of amnesty and inadequate avenues for legal immigration exacerbated the problem of illegal immigration.No, no slant there, right, and, well, there is no link here - PeakStupidity will write about morons, but WE! WILL! NOT! LINK! TO! MORONS!
Yeah, we should have let more in legally to avoid their coming in illegally. How about having controlled the border back in late 1986, right after this bill was signed, per the deal?!
Who would have thought that the Congress would have reneged on a deal with Ronald Reagan? He naivety cost our country a lot in this case, but he grew up in a much different era, back when congressmen were honest and upstandi... no, I just can't ...
Comments: