By
Tana Ganeva
14 times Republican presidents were "soft" on
immigrants.
As Republicans in
Congress
and right-wing
columnists
bellow that President Obama should be impeached if he issues an executive order
to overhaul the nation’s immigration policies, it’s important to note that a
long line of Republican presidents have done exactly the same thing for
decades.
In fact, more undocumented immigrants have been granted reprieves from
prosecution and deportation protection by Republican presidents than Democrats,
according to an American Immigration Council
summary
of dozens of White House-ordered reforms since 1956.
Today’s right-wingers don’t want to mention that their Republican hero,
President Ronald Reagan, signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986, which gave up to 3 million unauthorized immigrants a path to legalization
if they continuously had been in the U.S. since January 1982. The Reagan White
House also issued executive orders that deferred deportation of children of
non-citizens in more than 100,000 families, and also told immigration authorities
not to deport up to 200,000 Nicaraguan war refugees.
In contrast, President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
initiative (DACA), which provided a two-year renewable reprieve from deportation
and granted work permits, affected up to 1.8 million immigrants, according to
the American Immigration Council.
Another Republican president whose immigration policies could be an
“impeachable” offense, according to Republican congressmen like Texas’ Joe
Barton or
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, would be
President George Herbert Walker Bush, who in 1990 announced a blanket deferral
of deportations for 1.5 million spouses and children of unauthorized people,
which accounted for 40 percent of the nation’s undocumented population. That
step was very similar to President Obama’s DACA executive order in 2012. Both
presidents, a Republican and a Democrat, acted when Congress did not.
What fuming right-wingers fear is that the Obama White House might go
big—ordering federal immigration authorities to refocus their activities and
allowing several million undocumented households to breathe easy and lead more
normal lives. The
New York Times reported
that there are as many as 3.3 million undocumented parents of children who are
American citizens who have been in the U.S. for at least five years. The 1986
immigration reform law signed by President Reagan did not try to keep similar
families together. It was slammed as inhumane then—and is still sharply
criticized.
If Obama also includes children who were undocumented when they came to the
U.S. in his expected executive orders, that could add another million or more
people, the Times said. If the White House includes undocumented farm workers
who have been here for years, that could add hundreds of thousands more.
While it is possible that Obama’s executive orders could be the largest-ever
immigration reforms by any White House administration since World War Two, it is
important to note that previous presidents issued large-scale immigration
executive orders as part of a push to get Congress to act. President Bush’s 1990
reforms were based on a Senate-passed bill that was rejected by the House.
However, after Bush issued those orders affecting 1.5 million spouses and children, the House then passed the legislation.
What you will probably not hear as Republicans complain loudly about Obama’s
next steps, is that Republicans presidents—more so than Democrats—have granted
amnesty to undocumented people.
What follows are 14 executive orders granting immigration relief by
Republican presidents, starting in 1956, as compiled by the American Immigration
Council. Before Obama, the Democratic president who used his office to allow the
most immigrants to stay was Jimmy Carter, whose policies allowed more than
676,000 people to stay—not counting the 360,000 Vietnamese refugees who came
during his and the presidency of his predecessor, Republican Gerald Ford.
Here are the 14 executive orders on immigration policy by Republican
presidents:
• 1956. President Dwight Eisenhower allows 923 orphans to settle in the
U.S.
• 1956-58. Eisenhower allows 31,915 Hungarian refugees to stay after Soviet
invasion.
• 1959-72. Presidents Eisenhower through Richard Nixon let 621,403 Cuban
exiles stay.
• 1977-82. Presidents Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and Reagan, let 15,000
Ethiopians stay.
• 1981-87. President Reagan allow 7,000 Polish refugees stay after Soviet-led
crackdown.
• 1987. President Reagan stops deportations for 200,000 Nicaraguan war
refugees.
• 1987. President Reagan allows 100,000 children of non-citizens to stay who
were not affected by the 1986 law he signed granting amnesty to 3 million
immigrants.
• 1989. President Bush allows 80,000 Chinese students stay after Tianenmen
Square, which he formalized a year later suspending deportations and granting
work permits.
• 1989. President Bush allows 2,225 Indochinese and 5,000 Soviet refugees to
stay.
• 1990. President Bush defers deportation of 1.5 million unauthorized spouses
and children of people legalized under 1986 Immigration Reform and Control
Act.
• 1991. President Bush allows 2,227 Kuwaiti refugees to stay after invasion
by Iraq.
• 1992. Presidents Bush and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, allow 190,000
Salvadorans stay.
• 2006. President George W. Bush allows 1,574 Cuban doctors into the
country.
• 2006. President George W. Bush allows 3,600 Liberians stay in the
country.