Reagan, Bush 41, and the way we were...on immigration

There's not much dispute that Donald Trump -- with his talk of undocumented Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and his plan to force 11 million men, women and children back across the border, not to mention "the wall," which seems like his only actual policy position -- is the embodiment of how toxic the debate over border politics has become. It feels like it's always been that way, certainly since the talk radio folks riled up the masses to shoot down immigration reform in the mid-2000s. Anyone still remember Geno's in South Philly and "This is America -- please speak English!"?

Yet it wasn't always thus. You may have heard it brought up -- as one of the many reasons that Ronald Reagan was probably too liberal for today's Republican Party -- that the Gipper signed legislation in the late 1980s that provided amnesty to about 3 million undocumented immigrants. But there was much more to it than that. This weekend, a video resurfaced and made the rounds of a 1980 GOP presidential primary debate between Reagan and the man who later became his vice president and then his successor, George H.W. Bush. (Trivial aside: It was a League of Women Voters forum and the moderator was Howard K. Smith, who also moderated the famous first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.)

A young man in the audience asked Bush and Reagan whether "illegal aliens" should be allowed to attend Texas schools for free. To get the full flavor of the response, please watch the video I've posted below. However, here's a teaser of what they had to say. Bush said that undocumented arrivals in America "should get what's been promised to their neighbors" and that "these are good people, strong people...one of my family is a Mexican!" Reagan, for his part, says that we should not be "talking about putting up a fence" and that instead "we should open the border up both ways."

My God! What has become of us as a nation in the last 35 years?! Let's be clear: Reagan and Bush both were pro-business conservatives, and the notion that new arrivals from places like Mexico are a source of cheap labor was once paramount in the GOP. There's nothing wrong with that in theory -- people willing to come here for entry-level jobs and bosses willing to hire them -- but too often it's abused in practice by businesses offering substandard wages or horrific working conditions.

That debate aside, when did unfettered capitalism flavored with a little compassion give way to the lack of even basic humanity exhibited by today's Republican Party? If either Reagan or the future Bush 41 had uttered these sentiments in a 2015 debate, they'd be looking up at Jim Gilmore and George Pataki in the polls. Who's worse -- the base of the party, or the so-called leading politicians and conservative media stars who exploit their xenophobia to get votes, or ratings points? Maybe someday the historians sifting through the wreckage will come up with the answer.