Trump finally has put together a policy proposal on illegal immigration. I’m surprised. I never thought he would get this far. I’ve been considering him a complete clown that has no chance to win, but I must admit that this makes me take him a tiny bit more seriously.
The proposal is solid. It’s located on his web site. It’s notable that it’s literally the only item in a new section called “Positions”, so maybe there is more to come. Or, he might just ride immigration as long as it will take him.
There are three main ideas:
These are all populist positions. Most Americans are in agreement with Trump on this stuff, and most politicians on both sides of the aisle aren’t. This in my opinion is the source of Trumps surprising popularity.
So, let’s discuss. Are his ideas on immigration good for the country or not?
I think the one area where he goes off the rails is on insisting Mexico pay for a wall. It’s not that expensive to do and we can afford it. Making another country pay seems like overly complex and just silly. I think he’s insisting on this just because he won’t back down from his earlier comments. However, I do like the ideas he suggests of increasing fees for temporary workers from Mexico.
The one notable thing missing is any insistence on punishing employers for hiring illegals. This is a needed element to removing the draw that brings illegals to the country.
On the positive side are a bunch of things:
Increasing ICE resources to give this agency some teeth.
eVerify to ensure that illegals can’t be hired in the first place. (But I’d like to see some language about punishing employers who don’t comply.)
Mandatory deportation of criminals along with ending the insane catch and release we do now.
Ending sanctuary cities by withholding funding and ending birthright citizenship are probably the most controversial. They are both good ideas in my opinion. Birthright citizenship should simply be decided by the SCOTUS IMO, since I don’t think that was the intent of the amendment in the first place.
Putting American workers first would be tricky to implement, but reducing the amount of illegals in the workforce just by itself would have huge benefits for just about all American workers.
Increasing the wages for H1-B visas is needed at this point also. Companies are way to quick to hire contractors from offshore on visas before looking for American workers. I see this all the time.
I don’t think Trump’s position is, either they pay for the wall or it doesn’t get built. I think it’s more, they must pay for a share of it, or we will no longer have amicable relations.
In general, I agree with all of the plan’s proposals. The business elite will never allow implementation of any of them, of course. Trump’s plan is more of an ideal world, blue sky sort of statement.
The BBC is reporting that he also wants to end birthright citizenship.
Since this would, in effect, revoke my citizensihp, I don’t know what I think. If Trump wins, I guess, it’s an automatic get-out-of-the-US-free card; if (when) he loses, it’s a moot point.
I loathe the idea of a wall between the US and Mexico, but I am hoping his idiotic proposal forces the status quo to change to something more reasonable and less deadly to the people coming in from the south. As it is, we’re pretending we have a secure border on the one hand, making people suffer dreadfully to get in on the other, and exploiting cheap foreign labor on the third.
The “make Mexico pay for the wall” is probably the single stupidest campaign promise I have ever heard. And yes, I’m including Lyndon LaRouche’s promise to build a highway across Siberia.
The second sentence doesn’t follow from the first. I agree with the first sentence. The second is iffy at best. There is nothing inherently wrong with a wall, but I’m not sure how effective that would be.
In order of decending support:
Nationwide e-verify - I’m totally on board with this one. I don’t know why this isn’t the case already but this to me is a slam dunk. I have not heard a convincing argument against mandatory e-verify.
I generally support the positions about criminals, detention, and sanctuary cities. These are folks that are breaking the law overtly, regardless of their citizenship and should be treated as such.
I’m pretty neutral on the positions about ICE. This seems more like lip service and the things talked about seem pretty minor not worth policy positions on.
I’m generally negative on the H-1B and American worker requirement, and negative to neutral on the welfare abuse and jobs program. This seems protectionist and I’d be more in favor of more relaxed legal immigration that pulls talent wherever it is.
I’m completely against ending birthright citizenship. I like the bright line standard and there’s that whole 14th amendment thing.
Okay, but although both of my parents’ direct paternal ancestors are from what is now Germany, I don’t have or qualify for German citizenship, either. Most of those countries have rather strict limits on passing on citizenship: my grandmother was an Italian citizen, but born in the USA: her children do not qualify for Italian citizenship. If you take away birthright citizenship, you throw the status of millions of people into jeopardy.
Trump reminds me of what someone said about Gingrich, which is that he sounds like the type of guy a stupid person thinks of when he thinks how a smart person should sound.
Agreed. This is, by far, the most controversial part of his plan. I could maybe see the SCOTUS making an exception that it doesn’t count if the mother wasn’t here legally when she gave birth, because we wouldn’t want to take away that right from legal immigrants or resident aliens having a child. That said, I really don’t know how that could be justified under the wording of the Amendment. Then again, if they can read in reasonable exemptions to things like the First and Second Amendments, maybe they could for the Fourteenth as well.
That could create an administrative nightmare if someone’s citizenship is challenged, because then it’s not just when and where they were born, but also the status of the mother. That’s only an issue now for children born abroad to US citizens. That seems to be more or less what the UK has, that even if born in the country, at least one parent must be a citizen or legally settled (from a quick Google).
But it does seem to be the de facto standard for the Americas that birth within the country is guaranteed citizenship. And it really only seems to create an issue with so-called “anchor babies”. I’m seeing conflicting numbers on how much of an issue that really is.
What good would a wall do? People can climb walls pretty easily.
So the wall would have to have sentries or sensors. The amount of sentries needed would be quite expensive. Because you would also need reinforcements to back up sentries. Sensors would require constant maintenance and reinforcements to come to where the alarms went off. At which point the vulture who had landed there calmly flies off.
Perhaps it could be topped with razor wire or spikes. Those don’t seem to deter anyone on any of the tv shows I have ever watched, though.
So maybe they’ll go with lasers. And just have a cleanup crew that goes around cleaning up the carcasses of any birds that decided to land on the wall. And illegals can just use aluminum foil to refract the lasers like Parker did on Leverage.
I know what would really work: dig a trench from ocean to ocean and fill it with sharks. Sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.
Which is why European countries have generations of immigrants who have never been integrated into the life of the country. This is something the US does a lot better than most.
Trump is a buffoon and does sound like a blowhard moron most of the time. However, this thread isn’t about that. It’s about his first policy proposal which is actually quite good. I’m sure he didn’t write it. I hear he got input from Jeff Sessions, among others.
Obviously, people who are currently citizens remain citizens. After the law is changed, visitors to the US remain citizens of their native countries. If the children of these visitors don’t qualify for citizenship in their home countries, that’s the parents’ fault. We aren’t under any obligation to make up for someone else’s mistakes.