It was Jan. 19, 1989. Ronald Reagan was in his final full day as president of the United States and was making remarks at a Presidential Medal of Freedom presentation. As he finished celebrating the achievements of the honorees, he turned to another subject that was on his mind:
“Since this is the last speech I will give as president, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love.”
What followed is remembered as Reagan’s most majestic description of America as a welcoming harbor for immigrants. Here is just some of what he said:
“You can go to live in France but cannot become a Frenchman,” he said, quoting a letter he’d received during his tenure. “You can go to live in Germany, Turkey or Japan but you cannot become a German, Turk or Japanese. But anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American.
“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world … here in America, we breathe life into dreams. We create the future… If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”
For Reagan, this was more than rhetoric. In 1986, he signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, a measure that strengthened border security measures and imposed penalties on employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. But it also gave amnesty to some three million people who’d been living here illegally.
Simpson-Mazzoli didn’t solve the complex problems of immigration and actually exacerbated some of them. And so it was judged a failure. But it may be most notable because, to this day, it’s the last bipartisan major immigration reform measure passed by Congress.
In the almost four decades since, there have been good faith efforts to change our policies.
Republican President George W. Bush ran on comprehensive immigration reform, saying “America can be a lawful country and a welcoming country at the same time.” But he couldn’t persuade members of his own party to support a bill that, in addition to increasing border security, offered a path to legal status for those living in the country illegally.
One of those willing to work on reform during the Bush era was Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. His main interest was in strengthening guest worker programs that would allow Georgia farmers to more easily hire undocumented laborers. But when Chambliss told delegates at the 2007 state GOP convention he was working on a reform bill with a bipartisan group of senators including Ted Kennedy, he was loudly booed. Chambliss eventually voted against the bill that emerged as he approached his re-election campaign of 2008.
In 2012 President Obama bypassed Congress altogether, using an executive order to create DACA, the program granting permanent legal status to millions of young immigrants. But the program has been under partisan attack ever since, including a failed effort by the Trump administration to abolish it.
That’s the historical context in which the current negotiations between the White House and Senate to pass strict new immigration and border security measures are unfolding. Hanging in the balance are billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine and Israel. While past reform efforts have coupled hardened border security with expanded legal rights for immigrants, the current talks are focused only on stemming the flood of immigrants seeking refugee protections. President Biden has angered pro-immigration groups by declaring he is open to increasing expulsion and mandatory detention at the border in exchange for Senate GOP support for funds for Ukraine and Israel.
And yet, what to do? The overwhelming number of migrants now flooding the Southern border cries out for a sustainable bipartisan solution. CBS News cites federal data obtainedshowing that in five days recently, Border Patrol agents processed 50,000 immigrants crossing illegally into the United States, and 1,500 a day are entering at official crossing points.
But as negotiations in Washington stumble forward, Democrats fear they are losing the battle to assert the important role immigrants have long played in enriching American life.
In a Des Moines Register/NBC poll released this week, 42% of Iowa Republican caucusgoers said that Donald Trump’s recent remarks about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country make them more likely to support him.
It’s disconcerting to think just how far much of the country has come from that majestic vision Ronald Reagan described in that long-ago farewell speech:
“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation ... the last best hope of man on earth.”
