Trump immigration waffle reflects voter confusion on issue
The Quinnipiac results are Clinton’s strongest in weeks and exceeds the current six-point spread she enjoys over Trump in the Real Clear Politics cumulative average. In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” show Wednesday, Trump discussed how tough it is to break up families for deportation, suggesting that maybe upstanding people who’ve been in this country for years should be allowed to stay if they pay back taxes and insisting, just as Bush and Rubio were repeatedly forced to do, that such actions would not amount to “amnesty”.
‘I think they’re just really busy behind the scenes’. Under Trump’s new plan, there would be no citizenship for these people, but there would be legal status after the payment of some back taxes.
Trump’s comments are the latest turn in a now-daily recalibration of his position on immigration, which Trump said he would crystallize in a speech next week.
“People are hearing the message”, he said.
“Did he use the word “soften”? an incredulous Sen”. “Marco Rubio is totally weak on illegal immigration & in favor of easy amnesty”, Trump declared over Twitter last fall.
“People of this country who want their laws enforced and respected by all, and who want their border secured, are not racists”, he said. “More importantly, you don’t get to the White House without addressing the nation’s civil rights agenda”. “Now they brought it down”. We have gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country – they’re gonna be out of this country so fast your head will spin. Until his actions were blocked by a federal court, the Obama administration meant to remove the threat of deportation from about half the illegal immigrant population, allowing those without criminal records and those who had been in the country for many years to begin a process that would eventually lead to legal status.
Trump is a unique Republican presidential candidate in many ways, but his tonal moderation on immigration issues during the general election is not one of them.
“When I first heard this, when (Trump) said there could be a softening, that was a shift in a direction that concerned me”, said King, who supported Ted Cruz during the GOP primary.
Perhaps Trump will go on to concede that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is declining, falling to 11.3 million in 2014 from its peak of 12.2 million in 2007. “You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely”, Trump told Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
The candidate began his presidential bid previous year by saying that all illegal immigrants “have to go”, and that he would establish a nationwide, police-style, “deportation force” to round them up and send them back to their native countries. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be”, Trump added. But apparently they are too few to mention, since he didn’t bother to mention any of them.
Conway pointed to a roundtable discussion Trump help on Thursday with “African-American leaders from many different countries of origin and many different states” – an event that went largely unreported by news outlets.
“After that we’re going to see what happens”, Trump said. But he declined to flatly say whether he would round up other undocumented immigrants, stressing that once the initial deportations occur, “then we can talk”. Over the weekend, he met with a Hispanic advisory council and he is expected to give a detailed speech on immigration soon.
The best way to digest Trump’s tweeting ferocity is to compare it to someone else, so – surprise, surprise – we chose Hillary Clinton.
Clinton leads Trump 51 percent to 41 percent among likely American voters, according to poll.