Why Amnesty Remains America’s Best Immigration Policy

As Ronald Reagan Knew, a Country That Doesn’t Forgive Will Turn Against Itself

One afternoon in July 1985, President Ronald Reagan met with his domestic policy council in the White House cabinet room. The question: should he keep pushing legislation to offer amnesty to undocumented migrants?

Some Reagan aides wanted him to drop his support for amnesty, the term for granting legal status to people in the country illegally. Reagan’s pollsters had told him that the public opposed amnesty. And the president’s championing of amnesty had produced defeats. Reagan’s first bill to legalize immigrants failed in Congress in 1982. In 1984, Reagan had convinced …