Posted on 02/12/2016 2:12:41 PM PST by conservativejoy
Trump's supporters loved his promise this week to create a "deportation force†to remove all 11 million illegal immigrants living in America, and his repeated declaration that everyone here illegally will “have to go."
But his supporters tend to overlook is his other promise - repeated in a recent debate - that under his immigration plan "they will come back."
That's right. Under Trump's immigration plan almost all of 11 million illegal aliens (save for a small minority with criminal records) will get to return and get permanent legal status to stay here in America.
Trump supports amnesty.
On the Kelly File Thursday, Trump's son Eric expressed frustration that the media overlooks this:
The point isn't just deporting them, it's deporting them and letting them back in legally. He's been so clear about that and I know the liberal media wants to misconstrue it, but its deporting them and letting them back legally.
Eric Trump is right. His father has been crystal clear that he wants all the illegals to return and live in America.
Listen closely to what Trump is actually proposing. In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash earlier this year, Trump explained his plan this way:
I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal. A lot of these people are helping us ... and sometimes it's jobs a citizen of the United States doesn't want to do. I want to move 'em out, and we're going to move 'em back in and let them be legal.
This is a policy called "touchback" and it was first proposed in 2007 by moderate Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX). She offered a "touchback" amendment on the Senate floor that would have required illegal immigrants to return to their home countries to apply for a special "Z visa" that would allow them to reenter the United States in an expedited fashion and work here indefinitely.
Her amendment lost by a relatively close margin, 53-45. It was supported by most Republicans and even got five Democratic votes - Sens. Claire McCaskill, Max Baucus, Jon Tester, Byron Dorgan and John Rockefeller all voted for it.
The idea was considered so reasonable that in an April 22, 2007 editorial entitled "Progress on Immigration," the New York Times declared:
It's not ideal, but if a touchback provision is manageable and reassures people that illegal immigrants are indeed going to the back of the line, then it will be defensible.
So what Trump is proposing today - sending illegal immigrants back to their home countries and then allowing the "good ones" to return in an "expedited" fashion - was endorsed by the liberal New York Times!
In fact, the idea even got the support of - wait for it - illegal immigrants.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times did the first telephone poll of illegal immigrants and asked whether they would go home under a "touchback" law that allowed them to return with legal status. Sixty-three percent said yes, 27% said no and 10% were undecided. If they were promised a path to citizenship when they returned, the number who said they would leave and return legally grew to 85%.
Donald Trump's detractors were aghast at his invocation during the Fox Business debate of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" which forcibly removed 1.5 million illegal immigrants, and his promise the following day to establish a "deportation force" to remove the 11 million illegal immigrants living in America today.
Never mind the fact that we already have a "deportation force" - it's called US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The fact is, Trump won't need a "deportation force" or an "Operation Wetback" to get illegal immigrants to go home - because he has promised that they can return quickly with legal status.
The vast majority of illegal immigrants say they would voluntarily cooperate with Trump's plan.
If anything, the "touchback" plan Trump endorses was attacked by conservatives back in 2007. In an editorial, National Review called touchback a "fraud" that gives illegal aliens “their own privileged pathway†ahead of "applicants who have complied with US immigration laws."
That is precisely what Trump is proposing. Under his plan, illegal aliens don't have to go to the end of the line behind those who have complied with our immigration laws. They get an "expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal." They get to cut the line and then stay in America.
So if you get past Trump's bluster, the plan he is proposing is so liberal that it earned the support of the New York Times and the opposition of National Review.
The reason is simple: Trump's plan is in fact a form of amnesty - you just have to leave the country briefly to get it.
So when Trump says of illegal immigrants "they all have to go," don't overlook the fact that under his plan almost all would be able to immediately return – and stay.
This means there is very little difference between his plan and what John Kasich and Jeb Bush are supporting.
And most of his supporters don't even realize it.
Read the last line of my post again.
Sorry, I didn’t think it was THAT subtle.
Phyllis Schlafly offered a scathing critique of the plan.Whatever Happened to Mike Pence?
Despite the consistent failure of all guest worker plans (e.g., France), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is peddling a new plan to import foreign workers who really are guests and really do go home. Pence has turned his back on the 88 percent of House Republicans who voted that we must achieve border security first, because we'll be cheated on border security if Congress passes a "comprehensive" bill.
The Pence plan tries to avoid the amnesty label by requiring illegal aliens now in the U.S. to make what he calls "a quick trip across the border" to Mexico or Canada to pick up a new W visa. A foreigner could get a W visa only if a U.S. employer certifies that a job awaits him.
Pence's plan calls for setting up privately financed offices outside the U.S., with the cutesy title Ellis Island Centers, to hand out the new W visas, which he claims would be more efficient than government bureaucracy. Business would, indeed, be more efficient than government in importing more foreign workers.
Pence says that the Ellis Island Centers will be able to match workers with jobs, perform health screening, fingerprinting, and convey information to the FBI and Homeland Security for a background check in "a matter of one week, or less." We'll have to see that to believe it.
What about the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. today who do not have an employer willing to go on record as guaranteeing a job for a foreigner? These would include the relatives of jobholders, the day laborers, and the millions of illegal aliens working in the U.S. underground cash economy (an estimated 40 percent of the total).
Pence's bill is silent on this and his staff predicts that the free market will provide the answers. Pence told Time Magazine his bill "will require the 12 million illegal aliens to leave."
What about the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are not Mexicans? Illegal aliens will not have to return to their home country, but only appear at an Ellis Island Center anywhere outside the U.S. to pick up their papers. Will Mexico and Canada put out the welcome mat for a mass exodus of illegal aliens from the U.S.?
The Pence plan provides that the guest workers, after living here legally for six years under the protection of a W visa, can choose whether to apply for citizenship or to return home. If guest workers don't apply for citizenship, will Pence hire buses to deport them after they have raised a family and established roots? Having private employment agencies distribute the W visas would put the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Private industry has a built-in incentive to import as much cheap labor as possible.
My point is to those who criticize Trump for saying some illegals could apply to come back that according to present law anyone elected President would have to allow the same process unless and until laws are changed unless they choose to not follow the law.
Present administration makes it a policy to not follow immigration and many other laws of course everyone knows that.
Any candidate that is being honest will admit there is a process for deported illegals to apply to legally come back. That is not a “gotcha” by a long shot.
Oh and no need to introduce reality of the border issues to me, I can see it out my kitchen window.
Yes, touchback is amnesty. He hasn’t clearly said such as Rubio or Jeb! that he’d offer amnesty (then leading to citizenship) for all those who haven’t otherwise been convicted of separate felonies.
But I think the history here makes it legitimate for us to question anyone who specifies “expediting” a return of illegals who otherwise, as I presume you know, wouldn’t be eligible to return at all.
Maybe he’s downplaying whom he’d keep out, but the way he has also gone on to talk about them doing jobs we need them for, Americans don’t want to do, etc., makes me believe he’s in like with the standard NYC GOP (other than Staten Island Republicans) pro-amnesty position.
Trump isn't offering "touchback" amnesty ala Mike Pence. It isn't remotely close. I don't see how you can extrapolate an off the cuff remark as an amnesty proposal. See my post #162.
Any legislation that allows the lawbreakers to stay and work here is amnesty. Citizenship is just the cherry on top and not a prerequisite to be called amnesty. Legalization is amnesty.
But I think the history here makes it legitimate for us to question anyone who specifies “expediting†a return of illegals who otherwise, as I presume you know, wouldn’t be eligible to return at all.
I am not defending Trump's statement. I believe it was a misstatement and not a matter of policy. He was trying to link it to legal immigration saying that they must come in legally. Unless he states that the rules will be changed to allow expedited return, then it really is a non-statement. FWIW, 60% of the green cards issued in the US each year are based on a change of status. This means that people are here under another status, including in some cases illegal, and they are being legalized. I won't go into the many ways you can change status, but there could be individual cases where someone is deported and allowed back in due to their unique circumstances.
Maybe he’s downplaying whom he’d keep out, but the way he has also gone on to talk about them doing jobs we need them for, Americans don’t want to do, etc., makes me believe he’s in like with the standard NYC GOP (other than Staten Island Republicans) pro-amnesty position.
His position paper says the exact opposite. It is all about protecting American workers. Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again
I would also note that recently Trump has reiterated his position that he wants to reduce legal immigration.
Cruz has promised not to increase legal immigration, not to reduce it.
Pence’s plan sounds a little more thought out than Trump’s—but Trump has repeatedly said he’d expedite their return, and that there all these jobs that they were doing here and that Americans don’t want to do.
Agreed, however—amnesty doesn’t require citizenship. I didn’t in any way say it did.
I will vote for either Trump or Cruz if one of them is the nominee, although with a lot less enthusiasm than I had for them both a couple months ago.
I don’t intend any respect to you or your candidate. But I wonder if you can say what it is that inspires you about Mr. Trump these days, in light of his statements on amnesty, of course, but also ethanol, commercially-driven eminent domaine, ethanol, expanded medicaid, his willingness to “get things done” with his “friends” Pelosi, Reid and so on?
I love his willingness to give and take punches (and the fact that he wins the fight!) but more and more I wonder if he won’t govern ad hoc, willy-nilly, with no more regard for conservatism than, say, either Bush I or II.
I don’t see Cruz as such a hot second option either, mind you. He’s cagey, slippery, not pleasant personally...if anything I’m asking for a reason to back (and trust) Trump.
My interest is in building the wall and keeping Muslims OUT. I don’t care about ethanol or eminent domain (much) in light of immigration and the Sharia-loving candidates on the Democratic side. I believe he can beat Hillary in the general. I do not believe Cruz can. He’s got a personality only a mother or an evangelical can love. Slippery as hell. Trump is funny, smart, and can deal make in a positive way. No problems with his birth certificate and he’s got a nice family, too. I think his wife would be a low-key first lady and his daughter a beautiful example of modern womanhood. Unlike Michele Obama, Hillary or Chelsea.
Trump will succeed by choosing the right advisors. All the current advisor class is DC will be gone. Replaced with people he knows and trusts.
Changing the leadership at the top that way can only have a positive influence at the lower levels of the beaurocracies.
Certainly Ted Cruz wouldn’t be able to replace those people with outsiders because he’s only worked inside of government and wouldn’t know anyone who’s operated in the real world under real constraints.
In my first post to you I gave you a specific example, and you weren’t able to deny it.
It is a complete sentence which any reasonably intelligent person can understand. It is not a statement which advocates illegal immigration and in fact advocates deporting illegal immigrants so that they can come back legally and clearly states that they cannot come back so as to be illegal. Why is that difficult for you to grasp?
So all reading here can see that you are not making an accurate allegation.
Perhaps you that have an agenda that gets in the way of your being truthful. I not only was not able to deny it, I did so. To put it politely, you are engaging in terminological inxactitude.
Let the "deal-making" commence, right?
Trump has never specified how their return would be expedited and he has not said that for a long, long time. He has always said thy must be deported, the only candidate who has been consistent in that regard. Bush, Rubio, and Kasich have said they can stay and Cruz has shifted from legalization to deportation without rounding people up.
“Thought out” doesn’t mean makes sense. Of course it is amnesty, and it was only intended to sound enough like it wasn’t to slip it by the base.
Pretty much the same with Trump. That Trump hasn’t said how the return would be expedited, but has repeatedly said it will, just means his plan isn’t as thought out.
Deported in order to bring them back magically legalized on an “expedited” basis is, yes, a touchback amnesty plan.
Only if one is so dense as to not understand what the word “legal” means, or, is determined to distort what was said. Is English your native language?
I clearly understand the word ‘legal’, as well as ‘illegal’. You clearly don’t understand the word ‘expedited’. Illegal aliens should not ever get citizenship, much less ‘expedited’ citizenship.
Further, the lines to get in an obtain a green card are very long and a number of requirements have to be met. Further still if they committed fraud to come here illegally then that would likely prevent them from coming here legally. If they have criminal records in the country from which they are seeking to emigrate then that would disqualify as would having diseases. If they falsified documents while here illegally which were submitted to employers or governmental authorities that would likely disqualify them.
Further if they have once been deported and then returned again illegally, I believe that should disqualify them under any sensible plan.
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