Nominated the first female to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor, and using his bully pulpit to pressure the Soviet Union about East Germany and the eventual dissolution of the USSR.

Depends, were you rich in the 80’s? If so he was amazing at making you even richer.

He pushed for and signed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control...

which was a substantial improvement for millions of people. It's worth pointing out that the one (and probably only) good thing I can think of that Reagan did would get him tossed out of today's republican party.

The idea back then was a one-time amnesty in exchange for a secure border, which didn't happen.

That's why Republicans are unwilling to budge a second time.

The idea was actually that employers would start to bear some responsibility for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and thus creating an economic incentive for the migration.

That didn't really happen. You see plenty of roundups of illegal immigrants, many/most are employed. What you don't see ever are roundups of their employers.

If you want to actually see this problem solved immediately all you need to do is show a daily perp walk of the employers on the evening news for a few months.

Several years ago, there was a big immigration raid on a bunch of Tyson Chicken facilities.

They found about 900 undocumented workers.

Many of them gave evidence to officials, including written instructions from Tyson that advised them how to fill out employment, banking, taxation paperwork if they "didn't have documentation" and how to stay under the radar, i.e. Tyson didn't just know they might have undocumented workers, they were facilitating and actively enabling it.

In press conferences, when journalists asked "Are there any plans to investigate the company or issue fines or charges?", the response? "We are not considering that at this time." (And they never did.)

What it ended up looking like was that Tyson had been getting in some trouble, getting bad press for OSHA safety issues and perhaps had decided their undocumented workers were getting a little too angry about poor safety standards, making waves.

It would be entirely unsurprising to me if Tyson made a sweetheart deal with ICE that said "Hey, if you come to these plants, you'll get to make this big stink about undocumented workers" (and this was during the Trump administration), "but in return, can you leave us out of it?", very much shades of "Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"

Who ran ICE for the next 6 years?

ICE wasn't created until 2003, so no one.

Good point, but there was an agency tasked with security.

True, and I’m sorry for the snarky reply even though I knew what you meant.

But regardless of if this was the fault of Reagan or the largely Democratic-controlled Congress, Republicans in government since then have soured on any idea giving an ounce of amnesty because of it.

He became very popular to hate on in the past midterms because his position that "government IS the problem" is more popular than ever given the last administration. It was a vain effort to preempt what they knew was coming.

Seriously, why else would the name of a president who hasn't served in 40 years suddenly be brought up all the time?

The challenger/teacher in space thing was under his watch. It was a great idea. It just got screwed by NASA failures.

Also, his handling of the disaster was pretty good.