Trump’s hard-line speech contrasted strikingly with his more moderate tone in Mexico City hours earlier when he put on a restrained and respectful performance, even as he publicly disagreed with President Enrique Peña Nieto, who had invited him and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to Mexico for talks.
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The hourlong meeting was the Republican’s first formal worldwide trip as the party’s nominee.
Donald Trump made his much awaited Immigration speech on Wednesday in Phoenix. Trump is calling h.
The candidate also devoted considerable time in his landmark speech to the millions of illegal immigrants already in the US.
The Republican nominee for president promised Wednesday to remove millions of people living in the country illegally if elected president, warning that failure to do so would jeopardize the “well-being of the American people”.
“There will be no legal status or becoming a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country”, Trump declared, even has he sidestepped the dilemma about what to do with those who might stay in the country anyway – failing to address the major question that has frustrated past congressional attempts at remaking the nation’s immigration laws.
He lambasted millions of immigrants as violent criminals and a drain on the USA government.
But later, Trump said that once a new immigration system is in place, “we will be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those who remain”. “100 percent”, Trump said.
“For those here today illegally who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and only one route: to return home and apply for re-entry under the rules of the new legal immigration system”.
The tycoon failed to outline what he would do with those who have not committed crimes beyond their immigration offences – a sharp retreat after earlier promises to create a “deportation force” to remove the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the USA illegally.
That omission didn’t bother Dan Stein, who leads the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that pushes for stricter immigration policies. He called Trump’s speech the outline of “a coherent and workable strategy”.
His warm-up speakers including Arizona governor Doug Ducey; Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of an Arizona county who has become a symbol of the anti-illegal-immigration movement; former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence.
Critics, meanwhile, said Trump’s glossing over the fate of people who are peacefully living in the US without permission doesn’t make up for his overall approach.
But Pena Nieto later contradicted Trump, saying he had told the American that Mexico would not foot the bill and he bristled during his television interview when asked why he had not made that clear at the news conference.
Donald Trump returned to form in Phoenix Wednesday night with a nativist immigration plan definitively ruling out legal status for undocumented immigrants, as well as proposing to build a wall on the southern border of the United States and forcing Mexico to cover the cost.
Peña Nieto told reporters following a closed-door meeting that “misinterpretation or assertions” had negatively impacted perceptions of Trump’s candidacy.
“At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall”, Peña Nieto tweeted.
With the meeting held behind closed doors, it was impossible to know who was telling the truth.
Trump told the rowdy Arizona crowd that he respects the Mexican president.
“We will build a great wall along the southern border!” “And Mexico will pay for the wall. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it”.
“Instead of making him apologise, the government allowed [Trump] to complete the humiliation of the Mexicans”, Ricardo Anaya, leader of the center-right opposition National Action Party, said on Twitter.
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Donald Trump’s back-to-back immigration-focused events in Mexico and Arizona were an astounding display of political whiplash. In other words, Trump does plan on creating some kind of deportation force, but only as part of his existing policy to crack down on undocumented people who have committed crimes, which is not unlike the Obama administration’s “felons not families” approach.
