Before you send hate mail to the owner of this site I’d like to ask you to do something. Google “Donald Trump’s immigration plan” and see what happens. If you get the same results I got it will take you until the second page of findings to get to the actual link of his plan. The first page and a half were all excerpts and criticisms of the plan. Basically, Google in its analytical wisdom, has decided that offering you other people’s opinions of a plan you could read yourself in a few minutes should be enough to keep you from reading the plan and making your own decision. So go here and read it.
This is not a pro-Donald piece. I think Mr. Trump is a fitting symbol for the “family values” party since he is as fake and hypocritical as any of the other candidates running. Maybe he is the best Republican candidate because he is the “fakest” of the poor choices being offered. The only difference is that he seems to have some awareness that he is fake while the others continually protest that their ridiculous beliefs are all genuinely held opinions handed down to them by either God or Charles Koch (which in the Republican Party is the same thing.)
But, as the leading Republican candidate Donald Trump deserves to have his policy positions looked at and considered just like any other candidate, just making fun of his hair and orange skin are tools to distract us just as the media uses Hillary’s pantsuits and Bernie’s hair to avoid talking real issues. So this article is an attempt to look at the good and bad of this person’s immigration plan and how we, as professed liberals, may want to respond.
Trump’s plan states:
“When politicians talk about ‘immigration reform’ they mean: amnesty, cheap labor and open borders. The Schumer-Rubio immigration bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties.
Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first – not wealthy globetrotting donors. We are the only country in the world whose immigration system puts the needs of other nations ahead of our own. That must change. Here are the three core principles of real immigration reform:
- A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.
- A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.
- A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.”
So let’s start with the ridiculous first, and it gets even more ridiculous later, so work with me. Trump’s first point is true: A nation without borders isn’t a nation, but to go from that to “Let’s build a wall!” is a leap of ill-thought-out logic that makes little or no sense. Should we, as a nation, defend our borders? Yes, as do other countries. Do we need to turn America into a gated community (or a prison) in order to do that? No.
The Donald then goes even further in the hole by insisting that if he is president that Mexico will pay to build the wall for us! Even if you accept all of his points/opinions as fact that will never happen. Mexico is a sovereign country. If Donald thinks Mexico should pay to build a wall he should run for president of Mexico. This flawed logic and foolish waste of resources detracts from actually addressing the problem.
But Donald raises a few good questions/points. Sort of.
Mexico has published pamphlets instructing their citizens on how to illegally cross the border. In a way, Donald is right on this one. Rather than trying to fix its corrupt system, the Mexican government has taken the attitude that those who truly want a better life with a chance to improve their lot in life will move North or run the risk of ending up like the group of student teachers the state murdered simply for protesting for minor change.
He claims that Mexico and other South American countries have used illegal immigration to export their criminals and poverty to the U.S. This is where it gets tricky. Yes, this has happened. However, it has happened in large part due to the U.S. going into those countries, installing dictators, death squads, “free trade” that poisoned the local economy, and I could go on, as could you, about how we, due to our policies, have a responsibility to the people we literally chased from their home countries to our country! So, to blame the victims of U.S. economic policy for the consequences of bad U.S. economic policy makes no sense, which is why Republicans like it so much.
Donald Trump is right that undocumented workers have cost the country billions of dollars. They have sent billions of dollars out of our economy in remittances — money, that if employers were held responsible, would have stayed in the country to begin with — but he never comes out and says that those billions have actually been subsidies to the industries that have exploited those workers. That the damage done to our economy, is once again, by our own hand and not by those that we exploit. If labor was paid what it was worth, or if Bush the Lesser hadn’t dismantled the electronic e-verify system that had been set up, we wouldn’t have this problem to the degree we do. But because the answer is complicated and not easy, it’s a conversation you cannot have with a Republican, or some Democrats, to be fair.
Because of the sheer numbers of undocumented persons in the U.S., some of them have committed crimes. Sometimes horrible crimes. But to wash all undocumented with one brush is the same as suggesting that all the mass shooting murderers were white and that therefore all whites are mass murderers. Once again, Donald Trump has a point that our mechanism for dealing with crimes committed by undocumented people needs improvement. That we probably do need more ICE agents. But those agents should instead be arresting the employers who hire the undocumented, and yes there should be some mechanism in place that being a member of a gang should get you deported. Committing any violent crime should get you deported, permanently.
So for the most part, the crazy part of Donald Trump’s policy then moves into the not so crazy. There is a lot here not to like. Here’s the basic list:
- Enforce the Constitution [more on that later.]
We should, of course, hope every President enforces the Constitution. I assume that is just red meat thrown to the ‘rubes.’
- Triple the number of ICE officers.
Considering ICE has half the officers, total, as the city of Los Angeles and they have to cover all fifty states and territories I would be okay with hiring more depending upon their purpose.
- Nationwide e-Verify.
A nationwide e-verify that penalized employers rather than the working poor I could support.
- Mandatory return of all criminal aliens.
I think most of us would agree that sending violent criminals (key word there: violent) back to their country of origin and perhaps having that behavior, if a minor, also result in the parents being deported, may be worth discussing.
- Detention not “catch and release.”
There is a problem with the “catch and release” model. Everyone knows that most don’t show up, which is no surprise.
- Defund “sanctuary cities.”
I’m not sure how you de-fund an American city, but if we fixed immigration policy in a fair way we would no longer need sanctuary cities, so that is kind of a moot point.
- Penalties for overstay of visas.
If someone does overstay there should be penalties. That is already the plan in the current solution on offer.
- Cooperate with local gang task force officers.
The cooperation with local police officers should be transparent and limited. It is a slippery slope from cooperation to a federal police state.
- End birthright citizenship.
This is probably the most difficult. For example, should it be legal for rich Chinese women to fly in, rent a room in a boarding house for a few months, give birth to a child for the blue passport and then fly back to China? Is that child an American? Other countries don’t give citizenship this way. Would it be too extreme to suggest that the parent should at least be a legal resident, not even a citizen, in order for the child to be a citizen?
- Put American workers first.
And here, in item ten, Donald almost sounds like every populist Republican and Democrat to ever run for office!
- Increase prevailing wage for H1B visa holders.
Mr. Trump then points out that if we didn’t allow companies to pay slave wages to HIB visa holders they would hire more Americans for the jobs that they currently get slave labor to do.
- Requirement to hire Americans first.
The point is made that HIB visas hurt women, minorities and other immigrants, which is true. He even calls for companies to have to send job postings to the local unemployment office before they can even begin the process of hiring a foreign worker.
- End welfare abuse.
He, of course, calls for ending welfare abuse, but once again this is mostly a dog whistle. Undocumented folks tend not to get many welfare benefits, and those that they do get tend to benefit their children who are being raised here. I’d rather have healthy children.
- Jobs program for inner city youth.
He wants to create a jobs program for inner-city youth that would replace other visa programs that allow companies to bring in young exploitable workers from other countries.
- Refugee program for American children.
He wants to spend money making American kids safer and cities safer before we spend money on other refugee programs. If we cut the military budget I’m sure we could do both, but I get his point. If your children are starving yet you go out and feed someone else’s kids, you aren’t helping reduce suffering in the world, you’re an asshole.
- Immigration moderation.
Basically, this has been proposed before and isn’t a horrible idea — that we tie our immigration numbers to our unemployment rate. That if female unemployment, or black unemployment, etc., is too high, we don’t allow more labor in the pool until the current labor force have jobs.
So to sum it all up, even though there is some dog whistle racism to appeal to the typical low-information Republican voter, there are also a few points that should be discussed and could be helpful. I’m not personally in favor of amending the 14th Amendment. I think if we fixed some of the other issues we have with trade, e-verify, and better enforcement of laws already on the books, we wouldn’t need to have the conversation to change it. But tying the immigration rate to the unemployment rate I can see an argument for. Saying that before the tech department at your company can just automatically hire its entire team internationally that they should have to hire Americans first I would also be okay with. Taking care of our own kids and our own cities before paying out international aid? Well I’m mostly for that, also. Maybe if we instead tied our domestic and international aid to the military budget we could get even better results, but anything that helps us here, first, I am for.
So there is, of course, no way I would vote for Trump. The fact that the”usual” dog whistle racism is now so normal to be expected bars any sensible person from voting for him. But the Republican Party has divorced itself from reason and he is the leading contender for the Republican nomination. We should look at his policies and know them so we can mobilize our opposition to the crazy ones and maybe encourage him to be moved in a less crazy direction on the others. False optimism, there.
Featured image via YouTube screen capture
