Immigration reform is now on the front-burner and the stakes are exceedingly high for the Republican Party. My take on The Week:
There are already storm clouds gathering on the Republican Party’s right-most political horizon. But if the GOP squelches comprehensive immigration reform, the party could face a devastating political hurricane in the near future.
Conservatives have long felt burned due to 1986’s bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act, also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which reformed immigration policy and became part of President Ronald Reagan’s legacy. As The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty notes, “both sides of the immigration debate see it as a cautionary lesson…. Critics contend that the law actually contributed to making the situation worse.” There were 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants then, and 11 million plus now.
In 1986, I covered the act’s implementation as a reporter on The San Diego Union newspaper. In the end, the amnesty provision was a success, but the law failed to stem illegal border crossings. Perhaps the biggest and least publicized flop was the government’s failure in imposing sanctions on employers who violated the act. The scuttlebutt was the government looked the other way since businessmen needed cheap labor.
What happened next serves as a warning for today’s national Republican Party.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.