Trump, GOP on Immigration
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 28, 2023
Elect Donald Trump president next year and immigration issues apparently will cease, he is telling us — along with any restrictions normally associated with law, court order or tip of the hat to human rights.
While skipping the niceties of participating in any policy debate with his Republican primary rivals, Trump is making it known that he stands ready to launch a naval blockade, more border wall construction, eliminating “birthright citizenship,” and to insist on ideological tests to weed out “Marxists” among potential immigrants, as if we know what that might mean.
And that’s just the start.
According to Axios, Trump will reinvent Title 42 to devise an ill-health excuse to keep immigrants from the border, rule out the population from designated countries from eligibility, and force an income test to assure that migrants could afford health insurance and living expenses.
Elect any of his Republican rivals and you’ll get much the same, if moderated by mixed adherence to law. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, is proposing send U.S. troops across the Mexican border and to shoot anyone at the border with fentanyl in a backpack without a lot of concern about administrative law, while former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley suggests a system in which ”legal immigration should be dependent on factors such as merit, talent and business needs.”
Hey, the Saudis are shooting unauthorized Ethiopian refugees by the hundreds as they try to cross the Saudi border, according to reports this week. And European countries seek okay with letting boatloads of migrants, including children, drown. You too can have a country free of human concern. Violence, poverty, and starvation apparently deserve more of the same.
There is a fair amount of confusion among these candidates between immigration policies aimed at migrants and those aimed at drug smugglers. Breitbart offers Republican questionnaire responses on immigration. There is no confusion with issues over housing, feeding or getting migrants coming into the country to work; they just shouldn’t be here.
The Trump proposals may be filled with more bluster than court-enforceable law but are much clearer and sprawling than what we are hearing from his rivals.
As Axios described them, Trump’s plan as shared by adviser Stephen Miller and other advisers “would involve waves of harsh new policies — and dust off old ones that rarely have been enforced, if ever.” Miller told Axios, “For those passionate about securing our immigration system… the first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss — followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable.”
The Trump Plan
Exactly what goes into a screening of prospective immigrants to determine their “Marxist” ideological roots is unclear — either in what is asked, how it is checked or even how it is administered.
What seems to matter most is looking tough on immigration and threatening to oust millions already in the country. Miller said federal appointments in a Trump administration will require adherence to Trump’s immigration policies, whatever they turn out to be.
Over decades U.S. law has allowed screeners of legal immigration applicants to block “communists” but the law has not been enforced. Trump wants that to include “Marxists,” a term he has liberally been using to describe, say, prosecutors bringing criminal charges against him in four indictments. So, it is a little difficult to assess exactly what The Former Guy has in mind. It seems to involve searching social media accounts.
Sending the Coast Guard and the Navy to blockade the waters off the U.S. and Latin America to stop drug smuggling boats might run afoul of international agreements with Mexico or other Central American countries, but that would be no problem because all those relationships would have to give way to new anti-migration policies. Designating drug cartels as “unlawful enemy combatants” apparently would allow the U.S. military to target them in Mexico, despite whatever Mexico might have to say about it.
Expanding Trump’s one-time “Muslim ban” to block more people from certain countries from entering the U.S. would reimpose rules rescinded by Joe Biden.
Seeking to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants would apparently rely on a newly conservative Supreme Court majority, as would be such moves as extending Texas’ controversial floating barriers in the Rio Grande.
Of course, Trump would renew attempts to spend many billions of dollars to complete a 1,954-mile border wall, a project halted by Biden.
Trump promises to use a new Title 42 to expel children as part of an effort to fight child trafficking that no one outside of conspiracists has suggested is happening.
Legal Immigration at Risk Too
Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would face a far more aggressive approach to arrests and deportation. A suddenly “de-weaponized” FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the National Guard would be ordered to tracking them down for deportation.
Team Trump plans to use Section 212f of the U.S. code which grants the president broad power to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants” if their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
Trump previously cited this law in his Muslim ban, Axios noted, and likely would use it to limit who’s eligible to immigrate. A Trump effort also might call on the Alien Enemies Act — part of the Alien and Sedition Acts signed by President John Adams in 1798 — to justify quick deportation without having to go through legal procedures. He might declare an “invasion” at the border and label certain nationalities “alien enemies.”
Of course, all this would happen as the very same candidates discuss addressing what they see as Biden’s failed economic policies. A strong argument by economists is that we need more immigration, not less. And Congress has refused to engage in any comprehensive legislation to address the myriad issues arising under the label of immigration.
Legal immigration would be as much a target as illegal migration.
Trump would need cooperation across government agencies, prompting both loyalty oaths to Trump and an unrelenting campaign to remove civil service protections among federal employees and a mass firing program.
Generally, the Trump rivals sketch out the hint of programs to withhold money from so-called sanctuary cities or to beef up defense of the southern border. Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, has defended the use of military force in violation of existing law. Most of their concern is about drug smuggling.
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