Vox
By Dara Lind
July 30, 2015
On
Monday, I pointed out that a majority of Republican voters were to
Donald Trump's right on immigration: Fully 63 percent of them wanted a
plan to deport all unauthorized
immigrants. On Thursday, Trump pretty much closed the gap, proposing to
deport all 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently in the US and
then let some select few return.
Trump
said Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that as president
he would deport all undocumented immigrants and then allow the "good
ones" to reenter the country
through an "expedited process" and live in the U.S. legally, though not
as citizens.
"Legal status," Trump suggested. "We got to move ’em out, we’re going to move ’em back in if they’re really good people."…
What Trump is actually proposing
Because
this is Donald Trump we're talking about, the proposal is more of a
rant than a white paper. So there are a couple different ways to
interpret what he means.
Maybe
Trump is just proposing a variation on something that's been proposed
by Republicans before. Back in 2007, during the Bush-era fights over
comprehensive immigration
reform, some Republicans floated the idea of "touchback" — requiring
unauthorized immigrants in the US to return to their home countries and
apply for legal status from there.
Advocates
said that touchback would be a disaster because immigrants wouldn't
leave the country if they worried they'd be barred from returning.
Indeed, right now there
might be hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the US who'd be
eligible for green cards through their spouses or children, but haven't
applied because they think they'd have to leave (although the Obama
administration made it easier for them to apply while
staying in the US). But it was still treated as part of the plan for
ultimate legalization and citizenship for unauthorized immigrants —
because there were clear standards that would allow millions of people
to get legal status and return.
Trump's
proposal, on the other hand, is being treated as a plan for mass
deportation. That's because it sounds like he wouldn't be letting many
people back in at all.
"Really good people" is a vague standard. But it's also the same
language that Trump has used when talking about what immigrants aren't:
in the early stages of his campaign, his immigration platform was
limited to the contention that "Mexico isn't sending
their best people" to immigrate to the US.
Why Republicans are so reluctant to endorse mass deportation
So
if mass deportation is so popular among Republican voters, why hasn't
any Republican presidential candidate — or policymaker — embraced it
before now? Simple: It is
a totally impractical proposal, and anyone who might actually be
elected president has good reason to be wary of making it.
Let's
start with cost. It's huge. The center-right (but pro–immigration
reform) American Action Forum estimated earlier this year that "fully
enforcing current law" —
that is to say, deporting all 11 million people who are deportable —
would cost somewhere between $400 billion and $600 billion. That's the
net worth of 40 to 60 Donald Trumps, if you believe Trump's own estimate
of his net worth — or 100 to 150 Donald Trumps,
if you believe Forbes. And it's an expensive government program for the
party of low taxes and small government to propose.
There's
also a question of efficacy. The majority of unauthorized immigrants
living in the US have been here for more than a decade. Millions of them
have US-born children.
Those facts make it more destructive to their communities to deport
them. They also make it harder to find and deport them, period.
In Trumpworld, such considerations are secondary, because real leaders can get things done by sheer will:
Trump
would not say how he would locate, round up and deport the 11 million
undocumented immigrants he says must go. Instead, he deflected, saying
that while it may be
a task too tall for politicians, it isn’t for a business mogul like
himself.
"Politicians
aren’t going to find them because they have no clue. We will find them,
we will get them out," Trump said. "It’s feasible if you know how to
manage."
But
for policymakers — particularly members of Congress — they're very
serious problems. If Trump endorses mass deportation, it can easily be
dismissed as Trump being
Trump. But if a member of Congress endorses mass deportation, he's
going to be expected to come up with a plan. And how the hell is he
going to do that?
Will other Republican candidates be compelled to weigh in?
In
the past, Republican politicians who want all unauthorized immigrants
to get out of the country, but don't want to be on the hook for figuring
out how to do it, have
settled on the doctrine of "self-deportation": If the government passes
laws that make it sufficiently miserable to be an unauthorized
immigrant in the United States — by making it impossible for him to get a
job; by keeping homeowners from renting to her;
or by allowing or encouraging local police to arrest him and turn him
over to federal agents for deportation — the immigrant will decide to
pick up and leave. Multiply that by several million self-deporting
immigrants, and you get the result that supporters
of mass deportation want, while saving the government tens of thousands
of dollars a head.
But
Republican voters aren't particularly passionate supporters of
self-deportation. They appear to prefer mass deportation itself — at
least at present. And while in
previous cycles they might have had to settle for something less, they
now have a candidate who is expressing their viewpoint relatively
directly.
Of
course, that candidate is Donald Trump, who is still not going to win
the Republican nomination and whom other candidates have been trying
valiantly not to dignify
with a serious response. But that can't last. We're a week out from the
first Republican debate, at which Trump is (if current polls hold)
going to literally take center stage. Jeb Bush and Scott Walker can
ignore Trump asking if they support mass deportation
— but it's much harder for them to ignore a debate moderator asking the
same question.
That
puts more serious Republican candidates in a difficult spot. If they
disagree with Trump, they'll pit themselves against the Republican base —
and face pressure to
explain what they'd do instead. If they agree with Trump, they'll be
making a policy promise that will be very difficult to keep. And they'd
also be destroying any chance of Latino support in the general election
in 2016.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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