Immigration policy is sure to be a top issue in North Carolina’s 2020 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. For Garland Tucker III, it is part of the reason why he is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

When Tucker appeared May 8 on The Sean Hannity Show to announce his campaign for Tillis’ seat, he said he was most concerned with Tillis’ “weak” immigration policies.

“He co-sponsored a bill that not only provided amnesty, but provided a clear path to citizenship for illegal immigrants,” Tucker said on the radio show.

PolitiFact reached out to Tucker’s campaign to ask what he meant. Spokesman Carter Wrenn said Tucker was referring to the 2017 Solution for Undocumented Children through Careers, Employment, and Defending our Nation” Act.

As it turns out, SUCCEED would pertain only to people who were brought to the country illegally as minors. They are sometimes known as Dreamers, a term derived from the Dream Act, a bill first introduced in Congress in 2001 but never passed. Dreamers are an increasingly vocal group of young people who argue that after being raised and educated in the United States, they have nowhere else to call home.

Tillis sponsored SUCCEED as a more GOP-friendly immigration solution for that group of immigrants, compared to the bipartisan Dream Act or President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Tillis’ bill did not pass the Senate.

The Tillis campaign said SUCCEED was introduced as part of a larger plan to reach a compromise on border security. When it was introduced, Tillis and another sponsor, Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma stressed that the bill should not be passed if it was not paired with a solution for the border.

“Sen. Tillis does not support amnesty,” said Luke Blanchat, Tillis’ campaign manager. “What Sen. Tillis has strongly supported is President Trump’s plan to secure our borders, modernize our immigration system, and stop illegal immigration.”

The word “amnesty” has been the subject of many a fact-check by PolitiFact — including checks about Sen. Marco Rubio and Florida candidate Adam Putnam’s stances on immigration — but we wanted to see if there was any truth to Tucker’s claim.



SUCCEED comprises five steps to citizenship that would occur over at least 15 years.

The first step is to meet all eligibility requirements for conditional status. Even to qualify for this, an immigrant must have entered the United States illegally before age 16, and lived here continuously since June 15, 2012, when DACA was announced. The immigrant also would have to have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012.

DACA gave young people brought to the United States illegally as children the opportunity to work, study and get driver’s licenses without fear of deportation.

Under SUCCEED, immigrants are required to obtain high school diplomas or equivalents, pass criminal background checks, submit biometric and biographic data to the Department of Homeland Security, pay off any existing tax liabilities, be of “good moral character,” and waive future immigration benefits if they violate the terms of their status.

A minor applying for and receiving conditional permanent resident status would have to reapply at age 18, and either maintain gainful employment for 48 out of 60 months, earn a post-secondary or vocational degree, or serve honorably in the U.S. military for at least three years.

After five years, the immigrant would then have to apply yet again, and if conditional permanent residence had been maintained for 10 years, would finally have the opportunity to apply for lawful permanent residence. After five years of lawful permanent residence, the immigrant could apply for naturalization and become a U.S. citizen.


What is amnesty?

Despite SUCCEED’s many restrictions, Wrenn said it still qualifies as amnesty because “amnesty is a pathway to citizenship.”

Amnesty means a pardon for a large group of people, and in the context of immigration, it has become a politically charged word.

Amnesty does not have a “black and white definition,” said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the liberal-leaning Migration Policy Institute.

Some people say that any path to legal status for migrants is amnesty, and others say there is more to it. However, she said, compared to many other immigration reform proposals, SUCCEED was one of the narrower options.

Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, which pushes for less immigration, said that immigration amnesty is just like any other amnesty. In the simplest terms, he said, amnesty is forgiveness for a crime. Most amnesties have requirements that ultimately result in forgiveness, so having stringent requirements does not disqualify SUCCEED from being considered an amnesty.

“Every parking ticket amnesty, every tax amnesty and every other amnesty always had requirements,” he said. “The 1986 IRCA amnesty did.”

IRCA, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was signed into law by former President Ronald Reagan, usually serves as the standard for amnesty in immigration policy. In addition to a few minimal requirements, the bill said illegal immigrants could become legal permanent residents, or green card holders, as long as they could prove they were in the United States by Jan. 1, 1982. This meant that any immigrant who had been in the country continuously for about four years when the bill was signed into law in 1986, who paid a $185 fine and back taxes, and who demonstrated “good moral character” would be granted legal status.

In comparison, SUCCEED would not qualify immigrants for permanent resident status unless they qualified as minors who entered the country before they were 16, lived here continuously since, and were younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. They must have also already applied for, obtained and sustained conditional legal status for 10 years.

“I consider [Tucker’s claim] a deeply misleading use of the word amnesty,” said Edward Alden, the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.

Alden said SUCCEED was written for children who were brought here by their parents while they were still minors. Since amnesty is the act of forgiveness of a crime, and these children were legally unable to commit a crime, they could not be found legally responsible for their actions or even need amnesty, Alden said.

Compared to other immigration proposals, such as the Reagan-era IRCA, SUCCEED is far more restrictive, and it only covers a group of people who fall under a gray area in the law.


Our ruling

Tucker said Tillis’ SUCCEED Act was pro-amnesty because it gave illegal immigrants a clear path to citizenship.

He is correct that the bill would help pave the way for citizenship for a select number of immigrants in the country illegally, but it concerns only those who were minors when they first entered the country. It would give them the opportunity to apply for citizenship only after a long and highly restrictive 15-year process. Additionally, Tillis said the bill should not pass unless it was combined with a border security plan.

Tucker did not specify that SUCCEED pertained only to that group, so his claim gave the false impression that the proposed bill would grant a general amnesty for illegal immigration. Therefore, we rate it Mostly False.

