I lament that that decision was made in 1986 by President Reagan to
sign the Amnesty Act because it started us on a 30-year debate. Once
debate was out there and once the public understood and once people in
foreign countries began to believe that if they could, once, get into
the United States, there would sooner or later come along and be
another Amnesty Act that would include them and they would have their
path to citizenship and lawful presence in America and all of the
benefits that have grown massively since 1986, once you put the carrot
out, once you break the mold of the principle of protecting the rule of
law, then after that it is easier the next time and the next time and
the next time. Our virtue that we had a respectable virtue on enforcing immigration
law in `86 has been ratcheted downwards because of the `86 Amnesty Act
and at least six much smaller but subsequent amnesty acts since that
time. I looked into the language in the early part of this millennium more
than a decade ago, and they say, well, first of all, it is not amnesty,
and they tried to redefine it. I have had this discussion with Karl
Rove during the George W.
Keywords matched
immigration