Bloomberg
By Sahil Kapur
August 17, 2015
Billionaire
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's sprawling new
immigration proposal calls for deporting the estimated 11 million people
in the U.S. illegally
and closes many doors to legal immigration. The plan, released Sunday,
was quickly embraced by immigration-wary Republicans—Ann Coulter called
it the "greatest political document since the Magna Carta."
Trump's
blueprint—premised in part on tropes that have been refuted, such as a
link between immigration and higher crime—includes policy prescriptions
that are impractical,
expensive and may violate NAFTA as well as the U.S. Constitution,
according to experts.
Here are four reasons it's unlikely to become a reality.
1. High costs for mass deportation
Though
Trump's blueprint doesn't lay out costs, the heart of his proposal
involves rounding up and deporting all undocumented immigrants. "They
have to go," he said Sunday
on NBC's Meet The Press.
Of course, doing this would be very expensive.
In
2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director Kumar Kibble
told Congress it costs $12,500 to deport one person. Multiply that by 11
million and the cost
comes to $137.5 billion.
A
2010 estimate by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress
puts the cost of deporting all 11 million undocumented people at $200
billion over five years. The
conservative pro-immigration group American Action Forum made a similar
projection this year, placing the cost of a mass deportation program
that also prevents future illegal immigration at $400 billion to $600
billion over a decade.
The
Department of Homeland Security's budget in fiscal year 2014 was $60
billion, and it says it has the resources to deport 400,000 people per
year.
"We're
not going to be deporting 11 million people in any kind of short period
of time. It really isn't practical," Mark Krikorian, who runs the
Center for Immigration
Studies, a group that seeks to reduce the current level of immigration,
recently said. "You can't put all the toothpaste back in the tube."
2. Birthright citizenship and the Constitution
Trump
came out in favor of ending "birthright citizenship," a proposition
that will please many conservatives who say foreigners exploit the
policy by coming to the U.S.
and having children so that they can become American citizens.
But ending that policy would be "clearly unconstitutional," said UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler.
As
the Fourteenth Amendment states: "All persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and
of the state wherein they reside." In the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, the
Supreme Court held that "no plausible distinction with respect to
Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens
whose entry into the United States was lawful,
and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."
"To
end birthright citizenship would require a constitutional amendment,"
Winkler said. That requires two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and
three-fourths of the
states. In other words, it's dead on arrival.
3. NAFTA and the costs of building a wall
Echoing
a promise he made when he launched his presidential campaign, Trump
proposed Sunday to build a wall on the Southern border and make Mexico
pay for it. Mexico,
however, says it won't do that. Until it does, Trump says, he'll hike
fees for U.S. visas issued to Mexicans, and consider tariffs and foreign
aid cuts.
The
first problem with Trump's plan is the cost. While annual U.S. aid to
Mexico has averaged $233 million over the last five years, completing
the wall would cost roughly
$3.58 billion if past expenses for the project are any indication.
The
second problem is Trump's plans may violate the North American Free
Trade Agreement and spark a trade war with the United States' third
largest trading partner, said
Caitlin Webber a global trade expert with Bloomberg Intelligence.
"A
big jump in visa fees that only targets Mexicans would violate NAFTA,"
Webber said, which eliminated many tariffs between the two neighboring
countries. "An arbitrary
increase in tariffs on Mexican imports would be a flagrant violation of
NAFTA and would undermine critical supply chains for U.S. businesses."
4. A green card 'pause' and current law
Along
with a swath of protectionist limits on legal immigration and
guest-worker visas, Trump calls for a "pause" in issuing green cards in
order to have businesses "hire
from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers."
It's unclear how long the "pause" would last or what would be mandated
of businesses, but employers sponsoring a worker for a green card are
already required to go through a lengthy process—known
as a labor certification—to prove to the government they were unable to
find an American worker as qualified for the job.
"It
sound like he's saying you have to do that part again," said Gregory
Siskind, an immigration lawyer based in Memphis. "Which would be
ridiculous."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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