(CNN)Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said Sunday he would overturn a law
that grants citizenship to people born in the U.S. and put stricter limits on
legal immigration, offering his most detailed account yet of how he would handle a policy
issue that has become a cornerstone of his campaign.
Trump,
who has repeatedly been pressed for specifics on his immigration plan since the
issue rocketed him to the top of the polls, also explained for the first time
how he will force Mexico to pay for a wall on its border with the U.S. in his
nearly 1,900-word policy paper.
The
proposal could help Trump swat away naysayers who charge that he is not a
serious candidate. It also gives Trump an opportunity to burnish his
conservative credentials, particularly as he is coming under more heavy fire
from conservative influencers.
Trump
took a shot at his Republican opponent Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, slamming what he calls the
"Schumer-Rubio" comprehensive immigration bill, which passed the
Senate in 2013 and later died in the House, as "nothing more than a
giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties."
Trump's
immigration plan is based on three core principles: that the U.S. must build a
wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, that immigration laws must be fully
enforced and that "any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and
security for all Americans."
His
policy mixes some long-held Republican proposals on immigration with ideas that
are more likely to appeal to the far right.
Trump
calls for requiring a nationwide system to verify workers' legal status,
tripling the number of immigrations and customs enforcement agents and
implementing a tracking system to identify people who overstay their visas.
But
Trump's plans take a hardline approach in his vow to reverse a U.S. law that
grants American citizenship to any child born in the United States, regardless
of whether the child's parents are undocumented immigrants.
He also
calls for suspending the issuance of any new green cards, writing, "there
will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of
unemployed immigrant and native workers."
Trump's
policy proposal does not explain how long the pause will last.
Even
Trump's approach to the Dreamers -- those who were brought to the U.S.
illegally as children -- goes a step further than others in the GOP field who
believe children of undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the
U.S.
"The
executive order gets rescinded," Trump said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the
Press," of President Barack Obama's executive order allowing dreamers to
remain in the U.S.
"We
have to keep the families together, but they have to go," he told NBC.
While
Trump has called for deporting all of the undocumented immigrants in the United
States and allowing "the good ones," to re-enter legally, his policy
outline makes no mention of that plan. Instead, it calls for deporting all
"criminal aliens." It does not address the deportation of otherwise
law-abiding undocumented immigrants.
Trump
also explained how he would force the Mexican government to bankroll a wall
along the southern border.
If
Mexico refuses to pay for the wall, a Trump administration would begin charging
additional fees to Mexicans who come into the U.S. on visas or with border
crossing cars -- particularly for visas to "Mexican CEOs and
diplomats," which Trump would cancel "if necessary." Trump's
plan also calls for possible tariffs and foreign aid cuts and would seize
"all remittance payments derived from illegal wages."
"The
Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. They are
responsible for this problem, and they must help pay to clean it up,"
Trump wrote. "We will not be taken advantage of anymore."
Immigration advocates quickly slammed
Trump's proposal Sunday.
"The
extremism is stunning, and the direction is dangerous," said Frank Sharry,
the executive director of pro-immigration group America's Voice. "Trump's
'plan' would create a police state capable of rounding up and deporting all 11
million hardworking immigrant families settled in America."Sharry also
criticized Trump's move to change the birthright citizenship rules and put
further limits on legal immigration. "Fortunately, these marginalized
ideas are as unpopular as they are unworkable, and thus will never
happen," he said.
Trump's policy plan drew praise, though, from the
Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that supports reducing the number of both legal
and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and has been labeled a hate
group in 2007 by the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
"In
much the same way that we enforce most civil laws in this country, the plan
aims at deterring most violations of the law, and provides meaningful penalties
for those who are not deterred," spokesman Ira Mehlman said in an email.
But
Trump's immigration plan would surely draw stiff opposition from Democrats in
Congress, but it's also likely to raise alarm with the big business, a major
proponent of high-skilled visas. The price tag for his plan could draw the ire
of Republicans, too.
A 2013
bipartisan immigration bill that cleared the Senate called for doubling the
number of border patrol agents and completing some 700 miles of fence along the
border. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegged the cost of the bill
around $23 billion, mainly because of the security measures included.
Ultimately,
the CBO said the Senate bill would have reduced the federal deficit by
legalizing millions of immigrants living in the country illegally and, in turn,
boosting tax revenues. The CBO also said that legislation would spur economic
growth.
Trump's
plan, however, does not include those revenue-generating provisions.
To
prevent additional undocumented immigrants for entering and staying in the
United States, Trump pledged to "defund sanctuary cities" --
stripping cities of federal dollars if they do not fully cooperate with federal
immigration officials -- establish a nationwide employment "e-verify"
system, and end the "catch-and-release" policy of detaining illegal
immigrants without deporting them.
While
most of Trump's brash rhetoric has focused on ending illegal immigration
peppered with charges that immigrants coming from Mexico are
"killers" and "rapists," Trump has also advocated for
streamlining the legal U.S. immigration system.
There
was little mention of that in his latest policy proposal. Instead, it relied
heavily on plans designed to protect American jobs from foreign workers and
called for tighter rules on visas for high-skilled workers. In crafting his
plan, Trump sought advice from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a
longtime supporter of curbing both legal and illegal immigration.
"The
influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and
makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans -- including immigrants
themselves and their children -- to earn a middle class wage," Trump wrote
in his proposal.
Trump's
first policy paper comes somewhat begrudgingly. In a press conference Saturday,
he downplayed voters' interest in such policy specifics, calling them a
preoccupation of the press.
"I
think the press is more eager to see it than the voters, to be honest,"
Trump told reporters in Iowa Sunday. "I don't think the people care. I
think they trust me. I think they know I'm going to make good deals for
them."
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