Donald Trump is calling for the deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and for the end of automatic citizenship for children born to foreigners on U.S. soil, adding specifics to the hard-line immigration stance that first helped his Republican presidential campaign take flight.
The positions, outlined Sunday in a television appearance and Mr. Trump’s first campaign policy paper, fill in some policy details to what so far has been a candidacy driven by free-form television appearances and flashy rallies. Now, Mr. Trump will outline his stances on several other issues in papers that will roll out in the next few weeks, his campaign spokeswoman said.
Mr. Trump’s policy prescriptions will likely open him up to new attacks from Republican competitors who have seen their candidacies eclipsed by the star power of the wealthy businessman and television personality. Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist, said the other hopefuls can no longer assume Mr. Trump’s campaign will flame out, and they will have to draw distinctions on policy.
“That hasn’t happened in a sustained way yet, but the time is near,” said Mr. Madden, who isn’t affiliated with any campaign.
Mr. Trump, who sits atop several polls for the GOP nomination, has made immigration a signature issue since his June campaign announcement, when he said many Mexicans crossing the border are “rapists” who are bringing drugs and crime into the U.S. Many of his GOP rivals since then have tried to distance themselves from those remarks without alienating Mr. Trump’s sizable base of support.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the few GOP presidential candidates to fully embrace a path to citizenship for immigrants, on Sunday said Mr. Trump’s deportation call was bad policy and politics.
“Our leading Republican is embracing self-deportation—all the 11 million have to walk back where they came from and maybe we’ll let them come back,” Mr. Graham told CBS. “I hope we don’t go that way as a party.”
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
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Birthright citizenship is in the US Constitution. It is the model for citizenship laws in almost every country in the Western Hemisphere, and would solve many of the problems that Eastern Hemisphere countries face (including the Palestinian “refugee” problem). It was put in the Constitution to overturn the horrible Dred Scott decision that restricted US citizenship to persons of European ancestry. Earlier in American history full citizenship was restricted to Christians in most areas.
This is absolutely the most awful position taken by a major Presidential candidate since the isolationists in the 1930s. Maybe worse.