From Chris Moody and Alex Lee writing at CNN:
In 1979, as civil war in El Salvador began to grip the country, a young man named Aristedes Parada faced a choice: Stay home and be recruited into the bloody fight, or flee for a chance to survive.
“There was no future there. I had to be hiding from the military, from the guerrillas,” Parada told CNN of his youth in El Salvador. “It was horrible.”
He boarded a bus heading north for a days-long journey that would take him across his native country, through Guatemala and Mexico, and finally, to the U.S. border, where he hired a coyote to guide him into Texas illegally. Without papers, Parada worked in construction in Houston, and eventually made his way to Virginia, where he married Edelmira Parada, a young Salvadoran woman also lived there unlawfully. They had two children, both born as U.S. citizens.
The Paradas were among many who poured across the U.S.-Mexico border around the time when Ronald Reagan began his presidency. He faced a situation that appears all-too-familiar to the 2016 presidential candidates, who are grappling with a similar problem three decades later. But Reagan’s solution was very different: He eventually granted amnesty to millions.
While Reagan is recognized among Republicans as the greatest president in modern times, most GOP presidential candidates are ignoring his approach to immigration.
Read the rest of the story at CNN.
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