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The Spectacle Blog
Peter Robinson has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal suggesting that Ronald Reagan might have liked George W. Bush’s (and the old John McCain’s) style on illegal immigration better than the new McCain’s. He points to the 1986 amnesty and other examples of Reagan’s openness to immigration.
There’s no question Reagan was pro-immigration. In his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he said of the Shining City on the Hill “if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” But it is also worth noting that Pat Buchanan supported the 1986 amnesty. That experience chastened a lot of people. Moreover, Reagan also said that, “This country has lost control of its borders. And no country can sustain that kind of position.”
On immigration, there were things that we know now that we did not know then. Since 1970, there has been an increasing mismatch between the skill levels of the immigrants entering the United States and the U.S. labor force. This, combined with our lack of cultural self-confidence, has slowed the historic assimilation process. Some of this is due to sheer numbers. Much of it is due to the fact that the immigrants are choosing themselves: Half of the immigrants who have arrived in the last decade have come illegally; family reunification drives about 65 percent of legal immigration.
There are certainly circumstances where openness to immigration can be conservative. Reagan’s pro-immigrant sympathies were a reflection of his belief in both the greatness of America and the intrinsic value of the individual. But sentimentality about immigration without regard to the facts on the ground isn’t conservative at all. The Shining City’s interests come first.
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/15/reagan-and-immigration
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Ken (Old Texican)| 6.15.10 @ 1:46PM
Old Texican VI here.
Thank you for the link.
Eric Cartman| 6.15.10 @ 2:04PM
I'm pretty sure Reagan traded the then Amnesty for secure borders that have NEVER been accomplished. I'm equally sure he wasn't in agreement with allowing Mexico to dump its populace into our country to both relieve Mexico's population pressures and try to take back the Southwest. Pretty sure he's be against that - unlike the aholes over at the WSJ opinion page.
Derek Leaberry| 6.15.10 @ 2:45PM
Reagan's world was a different world than the world we live in today. Illegal immigration was not a big issue in 1985. World communism was the major problem in 1985. Reagan helped solve the problem of world communism, which collapsed shortly after his retirement.
Reagan has been retired for over twenty years, lapsed into Alzheimers a few years after, and has been dead for five years. The world today is different than the world in which he towered. World Communism is not a problem. Illegal immigration is a problem. How the Ronald Reagan of 1980 would have handled illegal immigration today is impossible to know.
Part of life is that problems change. Political parties who decide to live in the past and not address modern problems end up being loser parties.
gsr| 6.15.10 @ 5:50PM
True, true......practically no one is against all immigration - not even Pat Buchanan or Tom Tancredo, the question is how much is reasonable?
Today is not 1980 or 1930 or 1890. We already have a huge (and growing) population. We have a system that is tilted in favor of one ethnic group -latinos. Furthermore, we have 10% unemployment that is expected to last for years to come.
Why do we need to import 100,000 people per month, each and every month? Mass immigration (legal and illegal) erodes citizenship and civic pride and history, customs, traditions, etc.
We need an immigration reduction for say ten years. Family unification needs to be reduced, significantly.
A Balrog of Morgoth| 6.15.10 @ 6:13PM
Wait, I thought "Reaganism" was dead.
Except, apparently, when some deadbeat former speechwriter can use it to call us all racists.
Tim*| 6.15.10 @ 10:14PM
Marco Rubio Criticizes Reagan on Amnesty :
“In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people,” Rubio said. “You know what happened, in addition to becoming 11 million a decade later? There were people trying to enter the country legally, who had done the paperwork, who were here legally, who were going through the process, who claimed, all of a sudden, ‘No, no no no , I’m illegal.’ Because it was easier to do the amnesty program than it was to do the legal process.”
“If you grant amnesty, the message that you’re sending is that if you come in this country and stay here long enough, we will let you stay. And no one will ever come through the legal process if you do that.”
Rubio said the U.S. must first get control of its borders and its visa system, which often allows people to enter legally but remain after their visas expire.
“Only after you deal with illegal immigration in a serious way — seal the border and the visa problem — can you then create a legal immigration system that works. That still leaves you with 11 million people that are here illegally,” Rubio said.
While criticizing amnesty for those illegals, he also rejected the idea of a massive “police-state” roundup. He suggested requiring tamper-proof residency and guest-worker cards and fining employers who don’t verify that their workers are legal. That, Rubio said, would bring the 11 million figure down “dramatically by attrition.”
Dana Smith | 7.7.10 @ 10:00AM
This post is an eye-opener. What Arizona has done is childish. Things should be handled more maturely. I can't say Obama is completely wrong in granting amnesty. Is there any else possibility which he can do.
Dana
Samuel | 8.16.10 @ 3:34AM
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