Breitbart — As the president prepares to roll out his planned executive amnesty on Thursday night, the mainstream media are eagerly pushing an administration talking point that former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush enacted executive amnesty too. That’s not true, and it’s hardly the only Obama talking point reporters are helping push.
The Associated Press published a story touting the phony Reagan-Bush talking points earlier this week, arguing that Reagan and Bush “have acted unilaterally on immigration” and “extended amnesty to family members who were not covered by the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986.” The story adds:
Neither faced the political uproar widely anticipated if and when President Barack Obama uses his executive authority to protect millions of immigrants from deportation. Reagan’s and Bush’s actions were conducted in the wake of a sweeping, bipartisan immigration overhaul and at a time when ‘amnesty’ was not a dirty word. Reagan and Bush’s actions were less controversial because there was a consensus in Washington that the 1986 law needed a few fixes and Congress was poised to act on them. Obama is acting as the country—and Washington—are bitterly divided over a broken immigration system and what to do about 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.
Liberal media outlets including the New Republic and Media Matters for America quickly rallied behind those talking points, as have top Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). White House press secretary Josh Earnest has pushed the talking points as well, tweeting on Monday: “Pres. Reagan used his exec authority to fix probs in the immigration sys. So did Bush 41. Obama will too – this year.”
Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky, an expert on civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, election law and more, thoroughly debunked these claims in a story for Heritage’s The Daily Signal on Wednesday.
Spakovsky wrote that “this claim plays a bit fast and loose with history and fails to explain the significant difference between Obama going against the will of Congress,” with the idea being that Reagan and Bush carried out the will of Congress, but Obama is explicitly doing something Congress has repeatedly rejected.
Yes, Reagan signed an amnesty into law, the 1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA)—and then he and Bush executively implemented Congress’ directives. Reagan, according to his attorney general Ed Meese, later claimed that the amnesty was his biggest regret—but that’s beside the point the mainstream media, liberal lawmakers, and the Obama administration are trying to make. What they’re trying to do—Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian told Breitbart News—is obfuscate the facts so as to justify Obama’s unprecedented actions with no legal basis.
