Time
By Tessa Berenson
July 27, 2015
Among
the Republican presidential field, Donald Trump has had some of the
harshest words for undocumented immigrants. But when it comes to the
actual policies he supports,
he’s much less aggressive than he appears.
The
New York real estate mogul kicked off his campaign with some sharp
words about undocumented immigrants from Mexico: “They’re bringing
drugs. They’re bringing crime.
They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
He
then doubled down, arguing that as President he would make Mexico build
a wall along the border. “You force them because we give them a
fortune,” he said in an interview
with CNN. “Mexico makes a fortune because of us. A wall is a tiny
little peanut compared to that. I would do something very severe unless
they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall.”
Those
comments drew criticism from parts of the Republican establishment as
well as many Hispanics, but they were part of an overall sales pitch
that helped push Trump
toward the head of the pack. A Fox News poll at the end of June showed
Trump in second place behind Jeb Bush, with his support more than
doubling since those controversial statements.
But when it came time to discuss the actual policies he’d support, Trump was not nearly as harsh.
On
July 23, he told CNN that he would not actually build a wall the entire
length of the border with Mexico. “In certain sections, you have to
have a wall,” he said.
On
MSNBC the next day, Trump endorsed a “merit system” for the millions of
undocumented immigrants already in the country—something that sounds a
lot like a path to some
sort of legal status, if not citizenship.
“I
have to tell you, some of these people have been here; they’ve done a
good job; in some cases sadly they’ve been living under the shadows,” he
said. “We have to do
something. … Somebody’s been outstanding, we (ought to) try to work
something out.”
That
puts Trump to the left of, say, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum,
whose campaign told TIME in May that he would not support a pathway to
legal status or citizenship under any circumstances. And it puts him in line with other Republican
candidates, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker, who have endorsed some kind of legal status but not citizenship.
Trump
was never as aggressive on the issue as his campaign launch made it
seem. In the past, he’d even gone after Republicans for taking too harsh
a tack against immigrants.
In
the wake of Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012, Trump
blasted him for a “mean-spirited” policy suggestion during the GOP
primary that the U.S. should
make daily life uncomfortable enough for undocumented immigrants that
they would simply leave.
“He
had a crazy policy of self-deportation which was maniacal,” Trump told
Newsmax at the time. “It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of
the Latino vote.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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