I never said it wasn't. I said that Reagan called it "legalization", not amnesty as you posted. And yes, it was meant to be a one time deal.
The more relevant point which you ignored entirely, was Fat Teddy gutting the IRCA of 1986 of its enforcement and sanction funding. This turned a limited grant of amnesty to an original estimate of some 300K into a blanket amnesty. A policy that continues to drive the open borders crowd till this day.
Reagan never envisioned the IRCA of 1986 as a blanket amnesty. Period.
Legalization is amnesty. It is a distinction without a difference in much the same way that people use "undocumented worker" to describe an illegal alien. Ed Meese is the one who said that their administration admitted it was an amnesty, not me. Reagan, in his signing statement said the following":
BLACKS LAW DICTIONARY 93 (8th ed. 2004) (defining the term amnesty using IRCA as the quintessential example).
Reagan never envisioned the IRCA of 1986 as a blanket amnesty. Period.
But it was a blanket amnesty in much the same way that Hagel-Martinez and McCain-Kennedy were. I have read and compared all three. In 1986 you had to be here five years, learn English, etc. In fact much of the language in the other amnesty bills were lifted verbatim from the "Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986". "8 USC 1101 note"