Donald Trump began his presidential campaign with a commentary about immigration that jolted the race and indeed the very idea of what was advisable or acceptable for a candidate to say.
“The U.S.,” he declared in June 2015, “has become a dumping ground for everyone else’s problems. … When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. … They’re sending us not the right people.”
This set the tone for Trump’s campaign — saying it as he saw it, without pulling punches. It won him armies of supporters and critics. Although not well received in many quarters, his opening comments and those he added during the primary season made clear that Trump’s immigration stance would involve beefed-up border security, large-scale deportations, and (later) a cutoff or severe restriction on Muslim immigration.
But this week, Trump is openly talking about extending legal status to illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long period of time. In other words, he’s proposing a policy that, when suggested by Bush-era establishment Republicans, is typically denounced as “amnesty.” Indeed, in a FOX News town hall on Wednesday night, he discussed a plan almost identical to that of Jeb Bush.
Trump, as Bush had before, started by denying that he wanted “amnesty.” He then argued that maybe illegal immigrants who have clean records should be allowed to pay back taxes and receive legal status. “No citizenship,” Trump told Sean Hannity, adding, “They’ll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we work with them.” He said he would still prioritize deportations for illegal immigrant criminals, and crack down on sanactuary cities, and this puts him in the company of congressional Republicans and, in some respects, the Obama administration. As he put it, echoing Bush from months earlier, “To take a person who’s been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out. … it’s a very, very hard thing.”
The interview, however, ended without resolution. Trump actually polled the town hall audience for their opinion about what his immigration plan should be, and concluded by saying he “would come out with a decision very soon.” And there are a lot of murky details about exactly what his plan would look like in practice, should he go in that direction. Would he adopt Bush’s plan in toto, or would his plan work differently? How long would immigrants need to have lived in the U.S. to be eligible, for example? How would their tax liability be calculated? Would they still have to go back to their country of origin?
If Trump intends to adopt a more reasonable position on immigration in general, that is welcome news. But if that’s his intent, he needs to spell out a detailed and coherent policy for voters to judge. It would be appropriate, for one thing, to replace his campaign’s old immigration white paper with a one that reflects his new position.
Immigration is, after all, Trump’s signature issue. His call to “build a wall” on the Mexican border almost instantly became the rallying cry of his campaign.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner in January, Trump expressed openness to the idea that his promise of mass deportations and a ban on Muslim immigration was merely an “opening position” for negotiations on a future immigration policy. That’s fine as far as it goes, but now it appears Trump has done some negotiating with himself. If he is changing his mind, he needs to be crystal clear, with great detail, about what he would do as president on the issue that turned him into a contender in the first place.
