“Serving as a carpet for Donald Trump won’t likely help him”. But his proposed policies for dealing with the estimated 11 million people resident in the USA illegally showed just the smallest glimmer of a softening.
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Donald Trump’s campaign has been dedicated to making America great again, but he’s not stopping there.
“The proposal to build the wall, and to believe that Mexico could and would pay for it, is outrageous”, presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told local radio on Thursday, after Trump’s rapid, impromptu visit to Mexico on Wednesday.
Not only did Pena Nieto not demand that Donald Trump apologize for calling Mexican migrants rapists and criminals, but he stood silently by in their joint press conference while the Republican candidate repeated his promise to build a border wall between the countries.
Eventually he lumped rival Hillary Clinton in with undocumented criminals and mused about whether he should deport her, too.
Even for Trump – who has made an art of straddling both sides of an issue and playing to the preferences of the audience he’s standing before – the political whiplash was astounding.
The one softer note came near the end, when Trump said this: “In several years, when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good…then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain”.
Trump added that he would prioritize removal of people who have overstayed visas in the US.
Kaine called out Trump on the two approaches, noting that the Republican’s proposal will essentially turn America into a “deportation nation”.
Critics, meanwhile, said Trump’s glossing over the fate of people who are peacefully living in the USA without permission doesn’t make up for his overall approach. And he vowed to eliminate what he called the lure of legal status, something which he insisted draws hundreds of thousands of people into the US. He poured forth an hourlong harangue against all things alien, highlighting the lurid crimes of a handful of illegal immigrants as if to define the character of millions.
Trump talked about limiting immigration to its historic norms. “We agreed on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns and people across our border and to put the cartels out of business”, he said.
Among Pena Nieto’s critics this week, the country’s former president Vicente Fox tweeted, “Trump not welcome in Mexico, not by me nor the 130 million Mexicans”.
But this is a subtle point, and given the context of Trump’s insistence on other tougher measures, Trump supporters who had anxious that he might be softening his immigration measures in a significant way were relieved and pleased at his overall approach.
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Trump is accepting an invitation for the visit from president Peña Nieto, but the last minute nature of the trip is unprecedented.
