On nov. 20, President Obama gave his speech from the White House regarding illegal immigration. In his speech, the president, by means of executive action, imposed sweeping reforms that would allow some of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants working in the United States to remain in the country temporarily, apply legally for jobs — “step out of the shadows” as the president put it — and join the American society. According to Reuters, these measures would apply to those illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years or the 4.4 million illegal immigrants that have children who are U.S. citizen.

In addition, an estimated 270,000 more people would be eligible for relief under a new expansion by the president in a 2012 measure to cease deportations of people brought illegally to the United States by their parents when they were children. President Obama also promised to toughen border security to prevent more illegals from entering the nation, stressing the deportation of illegals has increased steadily in his administration.

Go back one moment to 1986. A sweeping immigration reform bill was passed with support from both parties. It promised once and for all to secure the border — as well as provide a path for citizenship for illegals who met certain requirements, such as living in the United States for a certain amount of time, at least since 1982, according to the Washington Post. Sound familiar?

The solutions put forth by the president are not new solutions. They are simply the same old ideas we have been hearing about illegal immigration in this country for decades. Many have accused President Obama of intentionally lying. According to politifact.com, he changed his position on whether or not he could use executive action from “I’m not a king” to “I’m obliged to do everything I can.” Others have accused the president of attempting to fill the country with future Latino voters who will certainly support the Democratic Party, to see that Republicans never win a national election again. I am accusing the president of something worse than either of those: wishful thinking.

Why would these same ideas that did not work in the past suddenly work today? Although illegal immigration has been lower in the Obama terms than in previous years, much of that was due to the poor economy of the United States, as well as the changing economy of Mexico. After the bill in 1986 took effect, illegal immigration continued to soar despite our country’s best efforts to suppress it. At the time, the system was not producing enough legal immigrants to meet the growing demand of labor, and many people were finding their way around the weak system. As many found ways to stay in the United States, the number of illegals grew from 5 million in 1986 to the 11 million today.

The same could occur today. There is no telling the specific long-term direction of the economies of neither Mexico nor America, and we cannot build an immigration system based on the pretense that conditions will always remain such that less people are taking advantage of the system. And with as much gridlock as there is today in Congress, any funding that the president may request in order to carry out his reforms may never materialize.

It is also very questionable that the president is claiming he does not want to reward people who broke the law and are not “playing by the rules,” as he puts it. Yet, that is exactly what this reform will do: grant a path to citizenship for people who came to this country illegally. It doesn’t matter whether they did it in 2014 or 2009; the rules were still broken. Setting an arbitrary cut-off date has no meaning. That time was supposed to be 1982, yet here we are,  32 years later, with the same issue.

It’s time for new ideas and more hard-lined approaches, not the same soft approaches we have already tried. Are we going to finally respect the laws we have, Mr. President? Or are we just going to kick the can down the road?   

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Grant Smith at [email protected].