No, it was an honest understanding that rounding up and shipping off millions of people can not be done in a way consistent with what conservative (against a federal paper checking sweep of the nation), Christian (love thy fellow man) America was at the time. Sadly we are a much different country now and put our desire to punish 'the scary other' above checks on government power or any pretence of following Christ's teachings.

People wouldn't have continued to come if Conservatives hadn't continued to employ and build business models around undocumented labor. Not addressing the root cause of the problem, employers willing to reward people for coming to the US, is the problem with the Reagan amnesty. Nothing else would have stopped immigration like stopping the reward for immigration would have. But conservatives are addicted to their bottom lines/business special interests and couldn't bring themselves to do what needed doing to stop what they term a 'foreign invasion'. At least the dems do it out of compassion and don't see it as an invasion. The conservatives just allowed the financing of what they see as a 'foreign invasion' for a small share of business special interest dollars.