Since some of you seem to have forgotten. This is what I actually said:
gbaji wrote:
The counter argument was that if we did grant amnesty, it would only serve to increase the incentive to use illegal entry into the US as a way of short cutting the immigration process resulting in an increase in illegal border crossings and an increase in the total number of people living here illegally.
This is the "action/result prediction". It's entirely about how the past amnesty would influence decisions made by future potential illegal immigrants and makes the reasonable assumption that all other factors aside it will make the decision to travel to and stay in the US illegally more attractive. How much more? Who knows. That wasn't the issue, only that it would be more attractive than if you hadn't granted an amnesty.
Quote:
Which ended out being exactly right. A dozen years after his amnesty, the number of illegals estimated in the US ballooned to 12 million.
For those following along, this was *not* part of the prediction. This is what happened. And what happened followed the prediction. No one said that if we had an amnesty that in 12 years we'd have 12 million more illegals in the US. They simply said that if we had an amnesty, we'd have more illegals in the country down the line.
Which was true. At some point, you have to give credit for the guys who predicted what would happen. More to the point, it's legitimate to criticize the folks who said it
wouldn't happen. That's what tends to get lost in all of this. All the arguments that X would have happened anyway fail to address the issue of those who argued that X wouldn't happen at all.
Quote:
It failed pretty spectacularly at "fixing" the problem. Conservative opposition to amnesty isn't based on some knee jerk anti-immigrant bigotry. It's based on the fact that not only did it not work the last time we tried it, it made the problem worse.
And this is the bit that Joph decided (predictably) to focus purely on the "but there are bigots out there!" approach. Um... Not the point. Conservatives oppose amnesty because it didn't work the last time. The degree to which it didn't work is kinda irrelevant, isn't it?