But Will Immigration Reform Work a Second Time?

Yesterday’s inaugural post on past and present immigration reform efforts drew a very encouraging number of responses, most of which were quite positive and supportive and all of them very, very interesting and appreciated. 

From the beginning of our thinking in creating this blog, we sought to establish a forum for persons with personal experiences with immigration matters as our primary objective. We believed that sharing those experiences and feelings with others through this venue would generate a dialog that would trickle to the decision makers and make for a better final process. We’re going to give it our best toward facilitating that happening.

Among the common comments in our mail overnight was a question for me as to whether I personally favored some version of a comprehensive immigration reform, given my strong criticism of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. On that point let me be as clear as I can be not having seen the details of any of the proposals out there. 

First, as abhorrent as I found the tainted  implementation of the last effort  with the high levels of fraud and disappointing broken promises to fix the border, I nonetheless believe it was far better to do something rather than to have done nothing. I will go even further and state that from a view 25 years later, it worked in spite of itself.

Now the issue for me is, can we, in the light of what we learned, do a better job the second time around? The answer is absolutely yes! However, my support for such a program will hinge primarily on our will to learn from the past mistakes and do the job right. We’re better than our record, let’s insist on doing it better.

Ben Ferro

benferro@insideins.com