Posted on 08/18/2015 7:59:10 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When Donald Trump said he’d build a wall across the border and that Mexico would pay for it, some people in the South Texas wondered how the billionaire mogul would swing a deal like that.
Now they know. In a newly released position paper — the first and so far only one of his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination — Trump has announced he’d slap new costs or regulations on virtually every aspect of cross-border activity, from cash wire transfers to border-crossing cards and port-of-entry fees.
Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, hasn’t fleshed out his proposal with many dollar figures. But civic leaders from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso, who rely on legal cross-border traffic, worry that it could be a bad deal for them.
“It is an anti-business, anti-job-growth plan,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, the central Mexican port-of-entry that Trump visited last month. “As my friends on the other side of the aisle would say, it’s a ‘jobs killer.’”
Trump’s immigration plan, now a central part of the Republican primary debate, represents what could be the most hawkish distillation of immigration proposals so far in the 2016 presidential race.
The former reality TV star says that in addition to increasing fees on the border, he would bring about the wholesale deportation of the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, seize the money they try to send home and deny automatic citizenship to their U.S.-born children.
While critics say his plans are wildly unrealistic — if not impossible to attain — he has set a new mark for the rest of the GOP field and opened up new fronts in the immigration debate, particularly in the border regions of South Texas.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has made border security one of the hallmarks of his comeback campaign for president, advocates a more complex border strategy based on technology and “boots on the ground.”
Trump’s call for a “wall” across the 1,954-mile Southern border has been variously estimated at costing between $20 billion to $30 billion. There currently are about 650 miles of fence, mostly in urban areas between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
He also would triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, to match the growth in the Border Patrol, which has tripled in size since 9/11.
Trump envisions savings from lower health care, welfare and education costs, though immigrant advocates say that their work contributes far more to the U.S. economy than they receive in social benefits.
But in border communities like Laredo, McAllen and El Paso, Trump’s plan also has set off alarms because of the far-reaching effects it could have on the lives of people who cross the border daily to work, shop and transport goods.
Unless Mexico pays for the wall — which it opposes — Trump said he would jack up fees for business and work visas, border-crossing cards, and ports-of-entry. Cuellar says that would be bad for Laredo, which logged 1.9 million truck crossings in 2014.
“The business community will be the first one to say, ‘What? You’re going to raise fees on trade, commerce and tourism?’ It’s basically shooting yourself in the foot.”
With about a million border crossing cards sold to Mexican nationals each year, backers of the plan say even a modest price increase for the so-called “laser visas” could generate millions for border security.
Civic leaders on the border, however, say the region’s economy is best served by lowering barriers to legal entry, not raising them.
“When you create added barriers to legal processes, that’s when you see an increase in undocumented immigration,” El Paso Judge Veronica Escobar said.
Earlier this month, at the close of an annual U.S.-Mexico summit in El Paso, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke took part in a cross-border 10K race donning a white baseball cap that read “The Border Makes America Great.”
The El Paso Democrat made clear the hat was intended as a direct rebuttal to Trump, who had just presided over a media event in Laredo wearing a hat that read “Make America Great Again.”
O’Rourke, noting his city’s low crime rate, professed embarrassment at the existing border fence, telling visiting reporters it’s akin to “an awful fence that the East Germans would be ashamed of.”
Critics have questioned not only the price of a border-length wall, but also the cost of deporting the entire undocumented population en masse. An analysis released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress suggests the average cost per person would be more than $10,000, for a total of $114 billion, to remove 11.3 million people.
That figure doesn’t count the social or economic ripple effects, especially in immigrant-heavy border regions.
“There are much broader costs in terms of what would be involved in actually going out and tracking down 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are deeply integrated into their communities,” said Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute. “Are we going to start knocking on doors and checking people’s papers? Are you going to go to the schools and hospitals? Stop people in the streets?”
Some have noted that both near and far from the border, the disruption of mass deportation would be especially heavy in the sorts of businesses that made Trump rich. “He’s been involved in the hospitality and construction sectors,” Rosenblum said. “Those are two of the most heavily dependent on unauthorized immigrants.”
One measure that could inflict more pain south of the border would be Trump’s threat to impound remittance payments from “illegal wages” to the families of undocumented workers back home.
Immigrants in the U.S. sent home an estimated $22 billion to Mexico in 2013, money that has helped supplement family incomes, build homes and create new businesses.
Trump has not said how he would take the money, and many question its legality.
“There are very few instances where the government can legally withhold earnings, and legal status is not one,” said Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
While the idea remains largely untested, some point to Oklahoma, which imposed a 1 percent tax withholding on international wire transfers. The money can be recovered through a commensurate 1 percent tax credit — which helps only those who pay state taxes.
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates immigration reduction, said the Oklahoma model shows that the idea is at least worth exploring.
“It’s not absurd on its face,” he said. “It’s worth thinking about. You could do that to deter illegal employment or other forms of illegal activity.”
Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship — the Constitutional guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the country — could position him even further on the edge of Republican politics.
While “anchor babies” born to undocumented mothers are a familiar concern in conservative circles, Trump’s solution would place him to the right of GOP rival Ted Cruz, one of the U.S. Senate’s most outspoken critics of President Barack Obama’s immigration policies.
As a Texas U.S. Senate candidate in 2011, Cruz stressed that birthright citizenship, however problematic, is enshrined in the Constitution.
“I think it’s a mistake for conservatives to be focusing on trying to fight what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship,” he said. “I think we are far better off focusing on securing the border. Because birthright citizenship wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have people coming in illegally.”
While some legal analysts believe a law ending birthright citizenship could be successfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court, others argue that it would take a Constitutional amendment.
Either way the bar would be high, leading some to suggest that the Trump agenda is more about provocation and publicity than serious policy.
“What (Trump) did is generate controversy, but not a plan,” Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said in a statement released by the Mexican Embassy.
Ever since Trump characterized illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals, Trump mania has been a dilemma for GOP leaders who worry about the party’s brand with Hispanics and other minorities.
But some say that Trump’s particular brand of populism — inveighing against the influx of foreign workers taking jobs or holding down wages — could help shift the terms of the immigration debate.
“It’s begun to move beyond just thinking about the border, and placed immigration in the context of the labor market,” Camarota said. “That’s really quite a departure, and a debate worth having.”
It’s anti-business for the same exact reason the 13th Amendment is anti-business.
I understood what you meant....seemed to me you meant that the only ones calling it ‘anti-business’ were folks like the GOPe \, Marl Zuckerberg, etc
Where oh where will the business ripples end? Housing rentals, Used car lots, cheap by the month auto insurance, EBT, Wic, Medi-Cal, the unions, school districts, rapacious rent to own shysters, payday loan shysters, moneygram fees to send the loot to Mexico, ripple, ripple, ripple.
What about all the construction jobs associated with building the wall?
“But some say that Trump’s particular brand of populism — inveighing against the influx of foreign workers taking jobs or holding down wages — could help shift the terms of the immigration debate. “
And that is precisely what is needed. I’d go one further in putting the responsibility on these countries exporting their poverty to the US taxpayer rather than reforming their corrupt governments and economic policies.
Mexico has been living next to a first world economy for 150 years and is still a basket case due to corrupt and racist policies emanating from Mexico City.
Lock in a huge population of young Mexican males agitating for change and you’ll see things change.
Well corporatist so are anti America, so, whatever...
As well as about 30 percent of the people polled who are going to chose the next President...And that number is going to rise...
I've worked my entire life...I am a pro-worker as well...And the left may just jump on the wagon...
South Texas is a Third World country. Anywhere that is 20%+ Hispanic is a Third World country.
We gave almost a billion dollars in foreign aid to Mexico in 2014. Seems like that would pay for a whole lot of fence and border patrol agents. $10,000 a person to send people back to Mexico? Loading them in school buses for a one way trip with whatever they could pack in a carry on bag that fit under their seat would cost a whole lot less than that. We’re not talking about first class on an airplane. Good grief.
Pregnant Chinese Women fly into California to deliver their Children so they will be U.S. Citizens.
Who would not think that there is something really wrong with that?
IMHO anti business is 93 million American out of the workforce.
Airplanes didn’t exist when the 14th amendment was written.
This is why the founders gave us the ability to amend. Circumstances have drastically changed.
Why are people so reluctant to amend the Constitution in the last few decades? It used to not be such a big deal. If we had done it on marriage 15 years ago we wouldn’t have same-sex marriage today. Now, it appears polling shows we would not have the votes to do a marriage amendment today (but we would’ve had the votes to stop a repeal of a marriage amendment if we had passed it years ago).
Polling shows the general public is conservative enough to seriously tighten immigration policy as well as to ban abortion (with the rape/incest/life exceptions). We should begin pushing for amendments for both right away while passage may be within reach.
Basically we don’t even need Congress to do it. If 38 of the states get on board, that’s all we need. 2/3rds of the state legislatures can have a convention to propose amendments and then 38 states need to ratify it. A handful of states would need some lobbying and campaigning to get them on board, but it’s possible it could succeed.
It may be “anti-BIG Bidness” but it’s very pro-AMERICAN. I finally got my first Social Security check and the commie bastards are saying that they are going to have to cut the amount, probably next year, so they’ll have the money to pay disability for newly arrived illegal alien idiot kids and Social Security and Medicare for Mama and Papa from Mehico. Uncle Sam can KMA.
But OReally said it was unconstitutional tonight. Mark better talk to him and get straightened out.
Pray America is waking
anti-business as usual...
Because Democrats are so in-tune with what’s good for business that the economy always thrives under them....Oh, wait...
So many outright lies in that article... , but typical of San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston news sources in TX.
Perhaps now American businesses will learn that they should start ACTING AMERICAN, rather than helping to DESTROY this country through Open Borders.
I always say that businesses that depend on cheap illegal labor have built their business on a pile of sand. Sooner or later, they have to know, Americans are going to put a stop to it.
Mexican children cross the border in Texas to attend American public schools. How would you like paying the property taxes for that illegal sham?
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