How Times Have Changed / The GOP and Immigration
Last week President Trump announced his plan to overhaul the nation's immigration crisis. The plan calls for legal immigration based on merit rather than people coming based on having a relative with citizenship. The plan also provides for the building of more walls and modernizing ports of entry to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants and refugees coming into the country.
An administration official says the plan has 6 main goals:
1) to fully secure the border
2) protect American wages
3) attract and retain the best and brightest
4) unify families
5) get labor in critical industries
6) preserve our humanitarian values as a country
While the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico has actually declined, those seeking refugee status from central America has dramatically increased. The system makes it fairly easy for those bringing children to get into the country as our detention facilities & Courts are currently overwhelmed and our laws don't allow families to be held for long. It is no secret in central American countries and that is what is so different now from the days when immigration along the southern border was generally about migrant workers.
There was a time when the problem was dramatically different as were Republican solutions.
Once upon a time at a GOP Presidential debate in 1980, Ronald Reagan said the following: "We should have a better understanding and better relationship than we've ever had."
"Why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems?"
As we all know, Ronald Reagan went on to become the 40th President. He signed a major immigration bill - "The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986." The Act immediately legalized the illegal immigrants living in the country. In return border security was supposed to be toughened up. The latter never happened and the number of illegal immigrants in the United States rose from 5 million in 1986 to 11.1 in 2013. The Act did not address the status of children of illegal aliens who were eligible for the amnesty program. In 1987 President Reagan used his executive authority to legalize the status of minor children of parents granted amnesty.
Thus ended the era of "Compassionate Conservatism."
It was also a different time for the US Congress. In those days bipartisan cooperation on such a vital issue as immigration was possible.
Today it is not.
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With obstruction via the House of Representatives and Federal Courts, there is little chance the crisis will end.
I see no end in sight.
We won't fully secure the border, and we don;t ahve a workable plan to catch the visa-overstayers.
Heck, we can't even get all the states to cooperate with the feds to deport illegal aliens.
As long as illegal aliens are sheltered in this country, I see no end to the fight.
And to be honest, I don't want the GOP to stop fighting. We already got royally screwed under Reagan when border security was supposed to be taken care of. Let's not repeat that fiasco.
Had we NOT been so screwed, perhaps we would be better off today.
Lessons learned
The only thing that changed is that Congress lied about securing the border and people are wise to it now. Reasonable people with common sense who actually want to solve our immigration problems have declined to grant any more amnesty until that promise to secure the border is actually fulfilled. You'd have to be a fool to do otherwise.