Republican insiders and free-market conservatives were fretting Monday over Donald Trump’s plan to choke off legal immigration and round up and deport millions of illegal immigrants.
Republican strategists worry that Trump’s immigration policy will alienate Hispanic voters and doom the GOP’s chances of winning the White House in 2016 — even if Trump isn’t the nominee.
The New York businessman/entertainer’s proposal to amend the Constitution and end birthright citizenship raised particular ire. With one exception (1998), the Republicans have lost every presidential and midterm election since 1992 in which they failed to garner more than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote.
“His positions are indefensible. I would actually rise up against him,” said Daniel Garza, a veteran Republican operative and the executive director of Libre Initiative, a Koch brothers group that advocates for smaller government and free market policies in the Hispanic community.
Free-marketeers griped that Trump’s proposals would strangle economic growth. Cutting off robust legal immigration of skilled and unskilled workers would grant Washington vast new regulatory powers over labor markets and wages. This federal constriction of the population would reduce the demand for consumer goods and services, costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars, and American citizens potentially thousands of jobs. The economy would further suffer by losing the entrepreneurial dynamism immigrants bring with them.
“It’s the most anti-free market immigration plan I’ve seen proposed in decades,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.
In introducing its immigration plan, the Trump campaign panned Republicans who favor comprehensive reform, writing in its policy white paper: “When politicians talk about “immigration reform” they mean: amnesty, cheap labor and open borders. The [Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y./Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.] immigration bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties. Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first — not wealthy globetrotting donors.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, a leading immigration hawk, consulted with Trump on the proposal. “This is exactly the plan America needs. Not only would the plan outlined in this paper work, but more quickly than many realize. Most importantly, this plan reestablishes the principle that American’s immigration laws should serve the interests of its own citizens,” the Alabama Republican said. “This plan includes an emphasis on lifting struggling minority communities, including our immigrant communities, out of poverty.”
At least one leading Republican presidential candidate on Monday declined to criticize Trump’s plan. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has previously said that legal immigration levels should be determined by their impact on American citizens’ jobs and wages, said his approach to immigration was “similar” to Trump’s. Walker also appeared to endorse Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship, although his campaign later told the Washington Examiner that he meant strengthening border security would negate the problem. Walker also rejects mass deportations.
In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney proposed that illegal immigrants “self deport” from the U.S. He ended up garnering a piddling 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Republican insiders worry that the GOP will become unelectable in presidential elections if it can’t compensate for the diminishing influence of the white vote by doing better with this rising demographic, and assumed the party was on its way to repairing the damage. The 2016 field of candidates is deep and diverse, featuring two Hispanics (Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas), an Anglo who speaks fluent Spanish (former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush), an Indian American (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal) and an African American (retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson).
Now Republican campaign professionals are weathering a new case of political heartburn as they try and figure out how much damage Trump’s proposal stands to inflict. The Republican presidential candidates other than Trump, the front-runner in state and national polls, tend to agree: border and interior security reform first, then a discussion of how to address the 11 million illegal immigrants, but no “amnesty.”
But Trump is advocating the deployment of federal law enforcement to round up and deport illegal immigrants — a policy even immigration hawks like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have never proposed. Trump even argued in an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that American citizens related to illegal immigrants might have to be deported along with their relatives if that’s what is required to keep families intact.
That, and his call to end the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of the citizen status of their parents has Republican campaign professionals working in the trenches dismayed at what the policy could mean for the party in November of next year. The anxiety is especially acute for strategists focused on down ticket races that are likely to be determined by success or failure at the top of the ticket.
“I would be curious about Trump identifying the Hispanics he claims he’s going to win when his immigration policy is centered on the deportation of family members, friends and neighbors of immigrants, many of whom have been living in the US for decades,” said a senior Republican strategist, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Not all Republicans are hyperventilating.
Some are encouraged by polling that, at least currently, shows Trump’s support to have a low ceiling. Republican voters, and their preferences, will change as summer gives way to fall and winter and they become more familiar with the other, more likable, appealing candidates.
Others say that Trump’s unique status as a famous, billionaire entertainer and real estate developer with minimal history in Republican politics should insulate the GOP from being tied to his nativist policies, for which there is always some sort of market among the broader electorate.
“Anyone that’s a Trump fan right now isn’t a fan of Republicans or Democrats, they just want to burn down the house on both sides,” said a Republican strategist involved in another presidential campaign.
Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.
