NC: Comments on Donald Trump's New Amnesty Plan

Mike Scruggs

 

Damn, look at all those Confederate Flags...........

Don't Shoot the Messenger Please

 

I have not decided on a choice for the Republican presidential nomination, but for a few weeks I have been thrilled to see Trump speak the truth about our problems, especially immigration, versus those holding it a taboo subject. But if you watch the Trump interview videos from the last few days, you will see that he has actually caved in the face of liberal criticism. He is now proposing a stupid kind of amnesty, i.e. sending illegals home and bringing most of them right back. His plan is administratively unworkable and obviously based on little research and thinking.  American workers, job seekers, and taxpayers would be even worse off than before.

I am still dissatisfied with the WIMP Republican establishment, and I think Boehner, McConnell, and Priebus have to go before grass roots Republicans and conservatives can have have any confidence in the GOP or any chance for anything but political disaster in 2016.  The Republican Party needs to clean up its act. The Donald can see and articulate some of the problems, which is indeed refreshing compared to the silence and lame excuses for tolerating the problems coming from the big-business-big-government RINOs. The sad pity of it, however, is that Trump obviously  doesn't know the deeper economic and fiscal problems that go with any amnesty or increases in legal immigration. Trump's plan to send illegal immigrants home and bring them right back as legal is unbelievably shallow, if not deliberately deceptive. Either way, Trump's solution to our immigration problems is just wacko.

Also, as I have said over and over again, just fixing the border will not stop illegal immigration. Almost half of illegal immigrants  now come in on legal tourist, work, or student visas, and then skip out and disappear into to whatever job or area they chose.If the border closes, more illegals will learn to abuse our unenforced visa system. Tight control of the border without visa control and workplace E-Verify enforcement would probably only stop about 25 percent of illegal immigration.   Making an illegal immigrant legal does not relieve taxpayers of the burden that bringing millions of low-skilled, poorly educated workers into the country, who can never earn enough to pay much in taxes.

Illegal immigrant households use on average $14,300 more in benefits and services annually than they pay in taxes. It actually gets much worse, when newly legalized illegals can claim more benefits.  Over the remaining lifetime of amnestied illegal workers, taxpayers would accrue $6.3 Trillion in additional tax liabilities (Heritage Foundation data). Amnesty, illegal immigration, and excessive legal immigration also displace American workers and drive their average wages down over $2,700 per year. The Donald has obviously not done his immigration homework. His plan might sound good to people who have no idea of the costs and dynamics of amnesty and excessive legal immigration, or that amnesties do not stop illegal immigration--they explode and multiply it. The explosion would  bankrupt the country.

I think we need to elect people to office who do their homework on issues and stand up for the common good instead of the Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau.

Trump's new, thoughtless amnesty plan would have the same effect as the amnesty plans advocated by Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and several others.  It is just more immediate and transparently stupid.  I am just as disappointed as you are, folks.