Immigration wobble

Trump’s baffling immigration wobbles 

Immigration law buffs say his latest comments don’t make any sense.

By Sarah Wheaton and Tyler Pager

Donald Trump may be “softening” his incendiary language on immigration, but those versed in the complexities of immigration law say his plan has gone from unrealistic to downright incomprehensible.

Trump’s campaign insists that he hasn’t changed his views. But as the Republican nominee ramps up his outreach to minorities, his latest talk on immigration has created a muddled mess, with Trump insisting in one breath that he’s open to “softening” laws that deal with undocumented immigrants, and pledging to be “100 percent” behind his wall in the next.

Both supporters and critics who study immigration law say it’s clear Trump hasn’t developed much knowledge about how the immigration system actually works since he first promised to build that border wall 14 months ago.

And they say his latest utterances are proof he’s no closer to having a comprehensive, workable approach to a long-broken immigration system.

“They were going to have to move beyond this knee-jerk reaction about deporting all the illegals because it’s just not a practical policy, and it never was,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictions on immigration. “But they could have done it in a more coherent and organized way. Instead it’s slapdash and confused.”

Krikorian said he is planning to vote for Trump in November even though he doesn’t fully trust him on immigration.

Trump has often tripped over his own tongue while speaking about sensitive topics like abortion and religion, seemingly unaware or uncaring about the language used in such debates.

In an interview airing Wednesday night, Trump declared to Fox News' Sean Hannity that there would be "no amnesty" for undocumented immigrants. But when pushed by Hannity if he would amend his previous pledge to remove all illegal immigrants from the U.S. to include an exception for those who have not committed other crimes, Trump got wobbly.

"No citizenship,” Trump responded. “Let me go a step further — 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.”

On immigration, it’s not the first time Trump has sent mixed signals. He has at times suggested that his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims was just a suggestion, and more recently said he’d instead focus on blocking people from countries with a history of terrorism and enact “extreme vetting.”

“I’m changing, I’m changing,” Trump said during the March 3 debate, alerted to the fact that his website says visas for highly skilled workers would “decimate” Americans’ salaries. Trump said that night that he actually supports them. In the morning, the campaign suggested there had been a misunderstanding about the type of visa; he’s against H-1B visas, which help U.S. employers hire foreigners with technical skills in fields like engineering and architecture.

“H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers,” a statement declared.

He’s wanted to have it both ways on deportations, too, noting that people can re-apply for citizenship once the “deportation force” has rounded up and kicked out the 11 million undocumented immigrants.

“We're rounding 'em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they're going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn't sound nice. But not everything is nice,” he told CBS last September.

“We’ve followed every candidate over the last year-and-a-half and he’s definitely the most difficult to pin down exactly what he’s meaning at times,” said NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck. The group pushes for stricter immigration laws, and Trump’s “revisions and new information raises some concerns about where he’s headed.”

Beck said there’s “no sign,” however, that Trump is moving toward offering work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants currently here.

“That would be the kind of thing, I think, that would collapse his base of support,” Beck said on Wednesday, before Trump's latest comments on amnesty.

Others heard irreconcilable differences in Trump’s rhetoric.

“You cannot simultaneously seek to be humane and effectively deport 11 million people,” said David Abraham, an immigration law professor at University of Miami School of Law. Notwithstanding the potential to split apart families, Abraham said, the need to provide due process makes such an effort “just logistically unimaginable.”

Trump’s gentler language came after he elevated respected Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway last week to be his campaign manager, and he’d been planning to give a policy address on immigration on Thursday — only to have the campaign postpone it indefinitely a few days ago.

“Immigration is a very complex issue and to get the solutions right, to come out with your specific plan, should not be rushed,” Conway said Monday night.

Indeed, experts say Trump appears to lack the ability or desire to adopt the nuanced language associated with the immigration debate.

“My sense is it’s not a conscious plan of softening his immigration position,” Krikorian said. Trump’s early railing against immigration was the equivalent of “Archie Bunker yelling at the television,” he added, but Trump is now trying to move toward “an actual policy that could be implemented.”

So far, the wall is not in the category of policy that could be implemented — despite Trump’s claims on Tuesday that “it’s easy.”

Even if he could persuade Mexico or Congress to pay for it, Trump would face other big obstacles: namely the private citizens and Native-American tribes who own much of the borderlands — predominantly in Texas — that don’t currently have some sort of barrier, according to Doris Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Bill Clinton’s administration.

“Some of these things would definitely require eminent domain,” said Meissner, who is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

Trump could, unilaterally, institute that “extreme vetting,” Meissner said, including interviewing people about their ideology. But adding layers of new questions to the existing vetting process could have unintended consequences, she said, namely “very significant” reductions in the number of people granted visas for any purpose, including tourism, business and education.

So the economy — especially the hospitality industry — could take a hit, she said, with questionable benefits for safety. After all, there are already questions about ties to terrorism in the existing process.

“You have to ask yourself whether somebody who really was bent on harming us is going to answer those questions honestly,” Meissner said.

Even if Trump could somehow stem the flow of illegal immigrants over the border or through airports, people seeking better jobs or fleeing violence — or just trying to connect with family members in the U.S. — will find other ways to get here.

“You can build the wall as tall as you like, you can deploy the Coast Guard in whatever intensity you’d like,” said Abraham, but that will just create “new systems of immigration.”

“You’ll cause deaths at sea,” Abraham said, pointing to the Europeans’ efforts to stem migration through the Mediterranean. “The price of smugglers will shoot way up.”

Trump’s lack of sophistication on immigration issues also stands in sharp contrast to the expertise of his top advisers, including Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress’ most prominent immigration hard-liners, and Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide now working with Trump on policy.

However, NumbersUSA’s Beck took comfort in Trump’s staffing.

“A lot of the common wisdom around Washington is that personnel is policy,” Beck said.