Politics & Power Quote by Ric Keller

Keller’s line is engineered to make immigration feel like a solved case: one past “mistake,” one clean data point, one obvious lesson. The mechanics are political more than statistical. “After granting amnesty” sets up a cause-and-effect chain that sounds tidy even as it smuggles in assumptions about why undocumented populations rise (labor demand, enforcement patterns, visa overstays, regional instability) and how they’re counted. The numbers do the persuasive heavy lifting because numbers feel like evidence even when the story connecting them is unproven.

The word choice is doing quiet cultural work. “Illegals” collapses people into an offense; it’s a label that forecloses sympathy and makes policy debates sound like pest control. “Amnesty” isn’t presented as a legal tool or negotiated compromise but as a moral lapse, a giveaway that invites repetition. Then comes the emotional hinge: “fooled.” That frames government not as balancing competing goods, but as a mark at a con. The subtext is distrust, not just of migrants, but of institutions and elites who supposedly fall for sentimental arguments. “Let us not be fooled again” recruits the audience into a vigilant “we,” positioning skepticism as civic responsibility.

Contextually, this is the familiar post-1986 script, invoking the Reagan-era legalization to argue against any future pathway. It’s less about revisiting that history honestly than about pre-loading a present debate: any reform that includes legalization becomes a rerun of the same scam, and the only adult choice is refusal. The intent is to narrow the policy menu before the conversation even starts.