In one of the greatest ironies in the wackiest, reality-show presidential campaigns either, on Wednesday afternoon Republican candidate Donald Trump was in Mexico City, standing side by side with the president of a country that he claims will pay for a two thousand mile wall along the U.S. southern border. It was a picture worth a thousand Tweets.
Ever since began his campaign last summer, the billionaire businessman turned presidential candidate has made illegal immigration his signature issue. He launched his campaign talking about how, when “Mexico sends its people,” they’re “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists” before adding the throwaway line “and some, I assume, are good people.” He promised to build a “great wall” and have “Mexico pay for it.”
Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric has made him one of the most hated people in the entire nation. Pinatas made in the image of the red-haired American are big sellers in the country. And yet, in an act of unimaginable stupidity, President Enrique Peña Nieto invited The Donald to his country, shook his hand and stood side by side as if Trump were already the President of the United States. Peña Nieto had in the past compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and yet he just handed Mr. Border Wall the one thing he lacked, the stature and imagery of a potential President of the United States standing side by side with a foreign leader.
In this press conference, Trump was dignified and diplomatic. Peña Nieto was as well but he inexplicably did not take the opportunity to emphatically state that his country would not be paying for the Great Wall of Trump. Instead, he merely got into a Twitter war with Trump about who said what in their meeting. Trump had stated at the podium that the subject about which country would pay for the wall did not come up but the Mexican president (in a Tweet later on) was emphatic that he directly told Trump that his country wouldn’t be ponying up for the fence at the beginning of their meeting.
The summit in Mexico draw rave reviews from the punditry class in the U.S., with even frequent critics Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer calling it a good day on the set of Fox News. In Mexico, the visit was not so well received, to put it mildly. Peña Nieto looked weak and submissive next to the big bully from the States.
So Trump, having had a terrific day and a win in the world of photo optics, had a chance to compound the win with a previously planned immigration speech in Arizona. Since Trump had been hinting in media interviews during the preceding week that he might be “softening” on his oft-repeated position on creating a massive deportation force to rid the nation of all that are here illegally, many predicted that he would offer a more nuanced tone. Whether you feel that he successfully doubled down on his diplomatic win in Mexico or blew it is kind of like a Rorshach Test. Beauty or ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.
Trump started off the speech by reinforcing the statesman-like image he had created earlier in the day…
I’ve just landed having returned from a very important and special meeting with the president of Mexico, a man I like and respect very much. And a man who truly loves his country, Mexico….
…We agree on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns, and people across our border, and to put the cartels out of business.
We also discussed the great contributions of Mexican-American citizens to our two countries, my love for the people of Mexico, and the leadership and friendship between Mexico and the United States. It was a thoughtful and substantive conversation and it will go on for awhile. And, in the end we’re all going to win. Both countries, we’re all going to win.
This is the first of what I expect will be many, many conversations. And in a Trump administration we’re going to go about creating a new relationship between our two countries, but it’s going to be a fair relationship. We want fairness.
— Donald Trump
With the word “but” diplomacy went out the window and the bombastic Donald returned. The speech outlined a ten point immigration plan but the focus and takeaway was on the violent criminal actions of the few rather than the illegal but otherwise law-abiding actions of the many. After going through specific examples of families who lost loved ones at the hands of illegal immigrants, he turned to the core issue that is the bedrock of his support among blue collar, working class whites.
Illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year….
While there are many illegal immigrants in our country who are good people, many, many, this doesn’t change the fact that most illegal immigrants are lower skilled workers with less education, who compete directly against vulnerable American workers, and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they can ever possibly pay back.
And they’re hurting a lot of our people that cannot get jobs under any circumstances.
But these facts are never reported. Instead, the media and my opponent discuss one thing and only one thing, the needs of people living here illegally.
— Donald Trump
On the last line, Trump is absolutely correct. It’s nearly gotten to a point that, from the left and mainstream media perspective, you’re a heartless racist if don’t support legalization of the 11 million (or however many) undocumented immigrants already here in the country.
Anyway, if you missed it, here are the ten points of Trump’s plan:
- Build a “great wall” along the southern border. “And Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.”
- End “catch and release” in which the Immigration and Customs Authority (ICE) catches somebody crossing the border, releases them into the country and hopes they show up for their illegal immigration hearing.
- Zero tolerance for “criminal aliens.”
- Block funding to sanctuary cities.
- Terminate President Obama’s “two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately five million illegal immigrants.“
- Suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur.
- Insure that other countries take their people back when they’re ordered deported.
- Complete the bio-metric entry-exit visa tracking system.
- Turn off the jobs and benefits magnet.
- Reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers.
OK, some points on these:
Regarding the wall, there was some media speculation that Trump wasn’t going to talk about the wall in this speech but was irked that Peña Nieto had Tweeted his assertion that he told Trump that Mexico wasn’t going to pay for it. Ever the big bully, Trump had to get the last word and couldn’t help but double down on his central refrain, absurd though it may be. I was amused however by criticism from left-leaning pundits about Trump “chickening out” about discussing the wall payment with President Peña Nieto. The was the first meeting between the men. Trump isn’t president yet. The meeting itself was Trump’s victory. Did people expect him to close that sale in one meeting?
During the speech, Trump claimed that the number of criminal “aliens” was about 2 million, which seems really high to me. Still, the stories of criminals being released into the population only to commit more crimes is sickening. After appearing on the podium for about an hour, Trump brought up nearly a dozen “Angel Moms,” the mothers (and one father) of children who have been killed by illegal immigrants. Each briefly told the story of their child killed by somebody who should not have been in the country. It was a powerful image. Now, one could argue that this is a distorted image, that it lumps the millions of peaceful illegals into the same group as the murderers. However, if you want to call it a stunt, then it was a copycat stunt of the “Black Lives Matter” moms who appeared at the Democratic National Convention. The idea that masses of illegal immigrants are here to murder American citizens is as preposterous as the idea that masses of police officers are deliberately murdering African-American youths.
On his sixth point (the suspension of visas to locations where adequate screening cannot occur), this is Trump’s new nuanced version of the universal Muslim ban he had announced in December, the universal ban replaced by “extreme vetting.” Trump specifically mentioned Syria and Libya.
Beyond the point of suspending visas, I was stunned by Trump’s claim (the seventh point) that there are 23 countries that won’t take deportees back. It’s not often that Trump says something that I didn’t already know. PolitiFact, while debunking many of Trump’s statements in this speech, called this one “Mostly True.” From what I could research, those “recalcitrant” countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Zimbabwe. I’m not sure how Trump or any president could force these countries to take people back but it is an outrage that this occurs. Making it worse, the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, which limits the length of detention for aliens who cannot be removed in the near future, allows even violent criminal illegal immigrants to be put back on U.S. streets if their home country refuses to repatriate.
This SCOTUS decision (decided 5-4), which reversed policies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations to detain such illegals indefinitely, in effect forces ICE to release criminals back onto the streets. Now, to be clear, this decision didn’t give criminal immigrants a special class over U.S. born criminals. This applies to immigrants who committed crimes and then served their sentences in a U.S. prison.
The last two points (turning off the jobs and benefits magnet and reforming legal immigration) are intertwined. How many times have we heard the term “we are a nation of immigrants” when advocating for the rights of the illegal immigrants? Trump talked about choosing legal immigrants based on “merit, skill and proficiency.”
I’ll say specifically what he didn’t: we need more doctors, engineers, and scientists. If a foreign-born citizen applies to and is admitted to an American university and graduates, that person seems like a good bet to be a contributing tax-paying member of our society. After Trump’s speech, when the subject of merit came up, a CNN panelist cried “what about the Irish laborers who came here a century ago?” The problem of the “magnet” is the social welfare programs that exist today, such as food stamps, welfare and ObamaCare. When our “nation of immigrants” came to this country, they worked or starved. Period. The social safety net that exists today didn’t exist when our nation was building and growing. The manufacturing economy that supported the immigrants who built our nation is vanishing.
We’ve admitted 59 million immigrants to the United States between 1965 and 2015. Many of these arrivals have greatly enriched our country. So true. But we now have an obligation to them and to their children to control future immigration.
— Donald Trump
Amen to that.
Now, finally, let’s tackle the elephant in the room that Trump didn’t specifically address, the millions of peaceful illegal immigrants that he previously said would be subject to mass deportation. During the primaries, Trump talked multiple times about a “deportation force,” that we had to “have a country” and they would all “have to go.” In recent weeks, Trump has either softened or ignored this issue because it’s one of the issues that won him the nomination but it’s completely impractical.
Still, Trump was clear that, under his plan, there would be no path to legalization or citizenship, that those currently in the country illegally would have “one route” to legal status:
For those here illegally today, who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only. To return home and apply for reentry like everybody else, under the rules of the new legal immigration system that I have outlined above.
— Donald Trump
Well, that sounds a lot like Mitt Romney’s much-mocked “self-deportation” position in 2012 doesn’t it? What’s left unsaid by those who advocate “touch back” is what happens to those who are here illegally who choose not to self-deport? This is why a path to legalization is critical to any comprehensive immigration reform. This is the position that was advocated (and mocked as amnesty by Trump and Ted Cruz) by their Republican primary opponents, specifically Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Jeb Bush.
This weekend, VP candidate Mike Pence was interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and Pence dodged and weaved as Todd pressed him multiple times on the issue of mass deportations. Trump really doesn’t have a position on this right now. He can’t embrace amnesty or legalization or risk offending his core base of supporters and he can’t embrace mass deportations because he’s trying to be more humane. So he’s stuck in a quagmire.
Now let’s get to the bottom line. Did Mr. Trump’s visit to Mexico help him or hurt him? My answer is this: the visit itself was a massive win, a big risk with a big reward. He looked presidential. He proved he could travel to a foreign country and not throw up over himself. But the speech afterwards, while appealing to his base of supporters and mostly appealing to me personally, undid some of the gains from earlier in the day. Multiple members of Trump’s 23-member Hispanic advisory board, appalled by the substance and particularly by the tone of the speech, resigned the next day. I would say that the meeting with President Peña Nieto was literally worth a two-point bump in the polls but that the speech gave away one of those points.
Because Mr. Trump hasn’t done any truly dumb things in the last few weeks and the drip-drip-drip of the email and Foundation scandals continue to erode Hillary Clinton’s popularity, the polls are tightening a bit and an unexpectedly strong debate performance in three weeks could turn the race into a virtual tie.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig