Posted on 04/05/2016 7:16:56 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Donald Trump would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by immigrants living in the U.S., according to a memo released by his campaign Tuesday.
The memo outlines how Trump would try to compel Mexico to pay for a 1,000-mile wall if he becomes president.
In his proposal, Trump threatened to change a rule under the USA PATRIOT Act, an anti-terrorism law, to cut off funds sent to Mexico through money transfers known as remittances. Trump said he would withdraw the threat if Mexico makes “a one-time payment of $5-10 billion” to finance the wall. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
So he finally said it out loud.
This is actually nor making Mexico pay for it.
If you want Mexico to build the wall, threats to seriously tax or cut off remittances is a better way.
If so, this threat would be meaningless....
Yep, not a dime in ANY Fed funds to sanctuary cities.
Trump does not want Mexico to build the wall it would have secret tunnels built in. LOL!
The POLITICAL optics are entirely different. :)
IOW there is more than one way to fund a wall.
everyone who said “can’t” was either lying or not thinking.
It could be done easy by replacing the relevant Govt agencies involved heads and staff. Start enforcing existing law. Nothing new is needed to do that.
Though I like taxing them, or cutting them off completely I don’t think either will be an effective way to generate revenue.
The money will either stay here (good) or be transferred another way. Like offshore accounts.
Drug money makes its way south of the border all the time.
We should not stop with just funding the wall, we should tax Mexico to offset some of the costs of repatriating Mexicans who don’t leave on their own, cost of catching illegals, etc. As the numbers of illegals drop, the tax should drop.
What "existing law" authorizes the President to simply grab billions of dollars from money people are sending to Mexico?
Executive orders and regulations aren't magically powerful, though they sometimes seem that way. That's why Obama was shot down on his immigration bill, and on his air regs. His actions lacked proper statutory basis. There's nothing even remotely close for this.
Something like 40% of Mexico’s GDP is from remittances. The average illegal has no good way to get the money back to Mexico except for Western Union. That’s what they know. So now the grocery store will take out the remittance tax and it goes in the wall fund. Voila’
Yes, because there is no way in Hades any judge with half a brain would find that taxing remittances to Mexico is within the powers contemplated by the Patriot Act. Zero chance this happens.
Tons of it. Seriously you have not seen how they grab OUR money very easy now...
What percentage of Mexico's economy is suffering by being remitted to the USA?
I would use that figure as a starting point for who pays how much for any wall.
Mexico's GDP is a bit over $1.26 trillion dollars. Remittances are far less than 40% of that.
Bingo. This is the opening bid in a negotiation. He’s asking for way more than he expects to get. By the time it’s negotiated down to taxing remittances, that will seem like a great middle-of-the-road compromise. Meanwhile, taxing remittances is what Trump has planned all along.
I would also suggest we stop foreign aid to Mexico, which is over $500 million a year. Most of it end up in the hands of the corrupt kleptocracy anyway.
Trump often talk about smoothing the lumps when bargaining. This is what it means. You don’t achieve the same result without going hard on them. This could embarrass Mexico if they simply demand them hand over $10billion. If you couch the deal as a mutual agreement to build a wall between friends, you could achieve the same result
$24.8 billion last year which is more than they got from oil. 10% of that would be $2.4 billion so in 5 years the wall is paid for. I like it.
No? How exactly will Mexico deny the American government their ability to tax or even confiscate money transfers from the U.S. to Mexico? They can’t
Mexico receives over $30 billion a year in remittance from illegal aliens alone. They also receive aid packages totaling over $50 billion a year. That is money the Federal Government grants them. There is no reason what so ever that we can not and should not eliminate that aid AND tax the remittance to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars that Mexican foreign nationals cost our country by simply being here illegally.
Enough of this nonsense that ‘we can’t do that!’ Of course we can. It is our country. We can do any damn thing we want to do.
Congress will fund the wall by taxing either the remittances or reducing, or better yet, eliminating the entire foreign aid program for Mexico.
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