New York Times
By Julia Preston
August 17, 2015
With
the immigration plan he revealed over the weekend, Donald J. Trump
returned once again to the strategy that has worked so well for him in
his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination: mixing a little policy with a lot of fiery
bombast.
In
the blueprint and comments he made on the news programs, Mr. Trump went
further than his Republican rivals to compile the ideal roster of
measures for those who want
a lot fewer immigrants in general. He said all illegal immigrants
should be deported, including young people who came to this country as children and have received protections though executive action by President Obama. He implied he would deport American
citizens if their parents were here illegally.
“We have to keep the families together, but they have to go,” Mr. Trump said.
Some
of his proposals are based on assertions that have been broadly
debunked. He portrayed undocumented Mexican immigrants as uneducated
criminals who have been living
off “hundreds of billions” of American taxpayer dollars for their
health care and education. But scholarly research has shown that
undocumented immigrants are much more reluctant to use public health
care than Americans. And billions of dollars of Social Security
taxes they have paid for benefits they cannot collect have shored up
the dwindling funds of that system.
Mr.
Trump accused Mexico of exporting its crime and poverty to the United
States. But while a bloody drug war has raged in Mexico in the last five
years, notably little
violence has spilled over into the United States, with several border
cities being among the safest in the nation. Mr. Trump would build a
wall across the length of the southwest border, a proposal Border Patrol
officials have long rejected as immensely costly
and inefficient.
But
Mr. Trump’s blueprint is a problem for his Republican rivals who have
tried to take fewer hard-line positions on immigration in an effort to
attract Latino voters,
like former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio, both of Florida. The
plan crystallizes a hostile approach to Mexico and Mexican immigrants
that is likely to stick in the minds of many Latino voters as reflective
of the overall Republican view of immigration.
To
force Mexico to pay for the border wall, Mr. Trump says he would
“impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.” A curb on
remittances would attack longstanding
lifelines between Mexican and other Latino immigrant communities in the
United States and families back home – often older parents or young
children – who rely on regular payments from workers here. Mr. Trump
also favors raising fees on visas and border-crossing
documents for Mexicans, making it even harder and more expensive for
them to come legally.
About
35 million people in this country were born in Mexico or claim Mexican
ancestry, according to census figures, and Mexican-Americans are the
fastest-growing group
of new voters. About half of Mexican immigrants are undocumented, so
their communities follow the immigration debate closely.
Mr.
Trump also called for an end to birthright citizenship, a proposal
other Republicans have avoided because it is hard to achieve and risks
alienating not only Latinos
but also African-Americans. It involves changing the Constitution’s
14th Amendment, which allowed freed African slaves to become citizens
after the Civil War.
Yet
among Mr. Trump’s populist proposals are some that could attract
support from Americans in the beleaguered middle class. He went further
than his rivals calling for
changes to the temporary work visas known as H-1B, to raise the wages
paid to immigrants and tighten requirements for employers to search
first for Americans to fill jobs.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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