Shortly after the meeting, the Mexican President tweeted confirming that payment was indeed discussed, and he reiterated his stance that Mexico would not pay for the wall.
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Immigration is Trump’s signature issue as he battles Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of the November 8 election, and he laid out a tough, 10-point plan to end illegal border crossings and abusive behavior by undocumented people in the country.
In the same speech, Trump said there would be a “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigrants.
“You can’t just smuggle in, hunker down and wait to be legalized”, he added. “Those days are over”.
The good feelings from his first meeting with a head of state as his party’s presidential nominee lasted only a short time, as a dispute arose in the hours after he left Mexico City over the most contentious part of the billionaire’s plans to fight illegal immigration – his insistence that Mexico must pay to build a physical wall along the roughly 2,000-mile US southern border.
Trump is said to have been mulling whether to soften his hardline policies, particularly his early call to deport some 11 million undocumented migrants living in the shadows.
He has vacillated between reaching out to minorities and returning to the anti-immigration rhetoric admired by his most ardent supporters, mainly white working-class males.
His tense global trip on Wednesday saw Trump navigating a political tightrope just 69 days before the United States election.
He told reporters during the appearance that they did not discuss who would pay for the construction costs of the wall along the 2,000-mile border, a project that would cost billions.
In an immigration speech delivered to a crowd in Phoenix, Arizona today, Trump reaffirmed his pledge to build the wall on the US-Mexico border, vowing that Mexico would pay for it.
Trump said he would suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening can not occur, suggesting “extreme vetting” as part of the screening process that would also include an “ideological certification”, confirming from prospective immigrants if they would uphold US values by asking their opinions on such issues as honor killings, respect for women, gays and minorities and attitudes toward “radical Islam” as Trump put it.
– “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian”.
IT SEEMS Donald Trump is struggling to get the truth straight on his campaign pledge to crack down on immigration.
He also promised to triple the number of immigration officers responsible for deportation.
But he remained unclear about exactly what would become of the 11 million people now living in the shadows.
Trump said a new set of immigration controls would help ensure open jobs first go to Americans, including “African-American and Latino workers who have been shut out in this process so unfairly”.
“Mexico will work with us, I really believe it”, Trump said.
“Trump just failed his first foreign test”, Clinton tweeted. “Diplomacy isn’t as easy as it looks”.
Trump launched his campaign previous year by declaring that Mexico was sending “rapists” and other criminals across the border.
But the two appeared cordial on Wednesday.
“We did discus the wall”.
The protesters shared a frustration and anger at the last-minute visit, which comes on the heels of a scandal revealing that Pena Nieto plagiarised his undergraduate university thesis.
Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump shake hands after a joint statement at Los Pinos, the presidential official residence, in Mexico City, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016. “I told him that is not the way to build a mutually beneficial relationship for both nations”.
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Others were less interested in dialogue. “We reject his visit”, Fox said on CNN, calling the trip a “political stunt”.
