Lessons learned from the failed 1986 amnesty bill

[LilOlLady]

Lessons learned from the failed 1986 amnesty bill
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the bill which was co-sponsored by Congressman Romano Mazola (D-KY), and Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) granted amnesty to about 3 million illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico.
Though the American people were told that the Simpson-Mazzoli bill would correct our “broken immigration system” and “bring people out of the shadows,” while ensuring that our borders would be defended, it quickly became obvious that we had been fed a lie…Sound familiar?
The 1986 law introduced for the first time, criminal as well as financial penalties for those who knowingly hire illegal aliens. However, actual prosecutions against employers, particularly large companies discovered to be harboring illegal aliens, have been few and far between.
Read more at the Examiner

 

[LilOlLady]

The first amnesty was a disaster, the next will finish us off
Of course, as is usually the case, people often fail to learn from the lessons of history...

In 2003, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 245 illegal aliens at Wal-Marts in Pennsylvania.

Another consequence of the 1986 amnesty, was that the families of all those allowed to stay in this country soon followed. This chain migration, very quickly resulted in a huge influx of mostly non-English speaking, uneducated illegal aliens, and undoubtedly further strained government entitlement programs.

Many believe this event was the beginning of the financial disaster which eventually bankrupted, and in many cases, closed dozens of hospitals in the American southwest.

Even President Reagan fell for the same rhetoric which we hear today from the open-borders crowd.
In his diary entry for October 16, 1986, Reagan wrote;
Does anyone believe that we "regained control of our borders?"

At a campaign stop in 2009, Rubio explained the lessons learned from the first amnesty...
In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people. 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."

The first amnesty was a disaster, the next will finish us off - National Immigration Reform | Examiner.com