Politico
By Danny Vinik
August 17, 2015
Donald
Trump’s immigration plan has a number of basic features: He wants to
triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers,
create a nationwide e-verify
system and build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
But
the billionaire businessman turned Republican presidential frontrunner
also includes an idea rarely, if ever, discussed on the national stage: a
vague proposal to
“impound” the remittances of undocumented immigrants. Mexico, he
writes, “relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent
from illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico ($22 billion
in 2013 alone).”
If
a Trump Administration “impounded” that money, it could gain
significant leverage in its efforts to get Mexico to play ball with its
other schemes, like building the
wall.
Except
he’s getting that number wrong. In 2013, Mexican immigrants—both legal
and illegal—sent $22 billion back to their home country. Considering
that around half of
Mexican immigrants are here legally and that legal immigrants earn more
money than undocumented ones, it’s likely that a large percentage of
that $22 billion is derived from legal wages, not illegal ones.
So far less money is available than Trump is claiming—meaning he’d have less leverage for his plan.
Perhaps
more importantly, immigration experts aren’t sure how his idea could
actually work—or even what exactly “impounding” means. Trump doesn’t
have any specifics on
how he intends to “impound remittances payments derived from illegal
wages.” In fact, those eight words are the only explanation of the
proposal. His campaign did not return a request for comment asking for
more details.
Reached
for comment, immigration specialists weren’t really able to clear
things up. “Nothing like this has ever been proposed by any serious
presidential candidate,”
said David Leopold, an immigration lawyer in Cleveland.
“I’ve
never heard of impounding them,” Daniel Costa, an immigration expert at
the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in an email. He added, “You’d
probably have to pass
a law requiring the person to prove that they were a citizen or
otherwise in a lawful immigration status, and if they couldn’t prove it,
then they probably wouldn’t hand over the money in the first place.
Otherwise how would you know what to impound?”
If
by “impound” Trump means “tax,” then his plan may be technically
feasible, depending on how it’s structured. The government could pass a
law requiring any person sending
money to Mexico to prove their immigration status; those who didn’t
prove they were in the U.S. legally would have to pay a tax. But that
plan faces multiple issues. “[It] turn Western Union cashiers into de
facto immigration officials,” Costa noted.
Beyond
that, it might not even be legal. Leopold suggested it would be
susceptible to an equal protections challenge. “Why for example would
wages earned from Canadian
or European nationals not be subject to the same treatment?” he said.
“Why are wages earned by undocumented [immigrants] subject to specific
targeting?”
Trump
could also follow Oklahoma’s lead and withhold a percentage of all
remittances—Oklahoma’s tax is 1 percent—and then give it back as a tax
refund to those who file
a state income tax. This targets those who earn income but don’t pay a
state income tax—mostly undocumented immigrants. “I don’t see why you
couldn’t pass a law like this at the federal level too,” Costa wrote.
Still, this scheme isn’t foolproof. Many undocumented
immigrants pay taxes with a TaxID number, allowing them to collect
their refund.
If
Trump did devise a workable tax plan, there are ways to circumvent it,
especially for people who aren’t on the government’s radar to start
with. Electronic currencies
like Bitcoin can offer anonymous cash-transfers (and if that seems like
a big technical obstacle, consider that immigrants have long been among
the most sophisticated users of long-distance phone schemes). Or they
would take the risk of using old fashioned
snail mail. Either way, it’s hard to see how the plan would rack up the
Trump-like pile of cash the candidate promises.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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