Obama Wants Conservatives to Know that Immigration Reform Won’t Be a Rerun of 1986

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


What are the odds that immigration reform will pass? Opposition has already started to mobilize from, among others, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, who noted the other day, “We’ve seen this movie before — 27 years ago, remember?” Ed Kilgore comments:

Shelby, of course, is alluding to a “scandal” that most people outside conservative activist circles are at best dimly aware of: the 1986 immigration law that sold “amnesty” under the false flag of reform.

I guess this is true: most people who are neither conservative activists nor political junkies don’t really remember the 1986 immigration bill. But make no mistake: it’s profoundly driven the approach toward immigration reform from both left and right. Among tea partyish conservatives, the 1986 bill is universally considered one of the great betrayals of all time. They were promised tougher border security in return for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but in the end they got only a wave of newly legalized immigrants flooding into their towns and schools. The tougher border security was a mirage, discarded almost immediately, which naturally led to yet another new wave of Mexicans crossing the border illegally and yet another call for a path to citizenship for them. As far as conservatives are concerned, they were played for suckers in 1986, and they’re not going to fall for this con again.

President Obama has done his best to blunt this anger by spending his first term getting tough on undocumented immigrants. E-Verify has been ramped up; deportations have become harsher and more intensive; fences have been built; and funding for the border patrol has been increased. Liberals have been incensed with much of this, but the result—with a big assist from the recession—has been a sharp decline in illegal immigration over the past few years. Generally speaking, Obama’s entire strategy with immigration reform has revolved around proving that he doesn’t plan a rerun of 1986. This time, he’s saying, there really will be tougher border security and tougher employer checks to go along with the path to citizenship.

Will this work? Conservatives have not been notably willing to credit Obama with much good faith in the past, and even Marco Rubio can only do so much to change that. Nevertheless, this has been the plan all along, and now we get to see if it works. If Obama can convince enough conservatives that he’ll be tougher than Reagan on border security, then immigration reform has a chance. If not, it will probably fail.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate