Republican President Ronald Reagan Believed in Amnesty
President Reagan was for amnesty
What is amnesty?
Amnesty is an act of forgiveness for past offenses, especially to a class of persons as a whole. a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense. In the case of immigrants Ronad Reagan meant getting into the country illegally.
As Reagan said, " I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally."
The Republican Party of today, no longer believes in those words. Today they use the word "amnesty" as a derogatory word. To instill fear.
Ted Cruz talks about "Obama Amnesty"
Time to tweak immigartion law
Today, as President Obama is working to pass Immigration Reform, most of the Republican party is crying out "amnesty."
What they hope is that the American people have forgotten and most have; is that in 1986 President Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
While the immigration bill was pushed as being what the country needed to tighten border security and keep American employers from hiring illegal immigrants, it also allowed amnesty for about 3 million illegal immigrants.
The Republicans will say that amnesty was the problem with the bill and that's why they don't want it now. What they fail to look at, is that the problem began with not implementing the tighter border security.
Fortunately, Republicans and Democrats have finally begun to work together to come to some agreement on this issue. Even Marc Rubio of Florida, a staunch Tea Party Republican is pushing for reform.
The word "amnesty" is not being used as often or spoken as loudly these days. Maybe they just need to do what the Republicans under President Reagan did to get their amnesty bill through and call it "legalization".
© 2013 Lady Liberty