If we ever get our country back, it's amnesty and citizenship for all undocumented immigrants

A FOX News poll during Trump's first term showed 83% support for it.

History will mark the two presidencies of Donald Trump as chapters in one of the greatest American tragedies. Trump’s second election victory was a triumph of psychopaths, returning a malignant narcissist to the White House and, with him, some of the worst human beings ever assembled in a presidential administration. One of them, Stephen Miller, is Trump’s fascist advisor on immigration; he is the malevolent force behind the ICE raids being carried out across the country.

The Trump-Miller Deportation Plan is racist, cruel, destructive and senseless — the worst abuse of government power since the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Americans should continue to protest this cruelty. But we have to look ahead to the next two elections to stop the purge of immigrants and start to regain some semblance of normalcy and civility.

So, consider this for the future file:

If — and this particular “if” seems mountainous right now — we ever get past this tragic time in the life of our country, we need a president and a Congress willing to go fully in the opposite direction — toward amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Secure the border, bring order to the U.S. immigration system. But stop treating undocumented immigrants — the people who pick our produce, pave our highways, paint our houses, clean our motel rooms — like criminals. If they obey the laws of the land, if they work, if they support their families, they should be given an opportunity to come in from the shadows.

In the spring of 1988, President Ronald Reagan and the Congress offered undocumented immigrants amnesty and a path to citizenship. The offer was made possible under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a historic and sweeping bill passed by Congress and signed by Reagan.

When he ran for re-election in 1984, Reagan said: “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”

The law did not do everything Reagan and Congress believed it would: It did not stop employers from hiring undocumented workers, and it did not stop people from entering the country without authorization. But it pulled 2.7 million people out of the shadows and gave them an opportunity to become citizens.

Looking back 37 years, the time when amnesty for undocumented immigrants was on the table seems almost quaint. It was when compromise in Congress was still achievable. And it was before Trump ascended, spewing all kinds of fear-inducing myths about immigrants, associating them with widespread criminality and “stealing” jobs from American citizens.

Reagan’s support of amnesty looks like a weak moment to today’s hardliners, who go off the deep end anytime someone, particularly a fellow Republican, mentions amnesty.

But polling shows a huge difference in public sentiment toward undocumented immigrants who commit crimes and those who are just living and working here.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, a Quinnipiac poll and a FOX News poll both showed support for DACA — allowing Dreamers to stay in the country and apply for citizenship — at 80 percent.

And, even more shocking, the same FOX News poll found that 83 percent of voters supported a system for “all illegal immigrants who are currently working in the country to become legal residents.”

That demonstrates a huge disconnect between how a large majority of Americans think the immigration impasse should be resolved and how Trump and Miller want it resolved: with Gestapo-like enforcement and deportations that split up families and damage businesses.

Amnesty is the way to go — after Trump and Miller are gone. Bring people out of the shadows, starting with the Dreamers and their families. Let them become citizens. We will begin to be a better country.