What a Reagan-era law can teach Democrats about legalizing undocumented immigrants

Among President Joe Biden’s key campaign promises on immigration was to create an eight-year path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US as part of a broader reform package that is currently stalled in Congress.

Republicans have decried the proposal as a magnet for further unauthorized immigration, but GOP lawmakers supported a similarly sweeping law to legalize the undocumented population in 1986 — the last and only legislation of its kind that Congress has passed.

Nearly four decades later, it’s clear the Republican position isn’t...