“Some of these (illegal immigrants) are fantastic people. I’ve been to the border. I was there a few days ago. I met some people. These are fantastic people, and they have great reputations within their communities………The bad ones, they’re gone. They never come back. They’ll never get back into this country. But the good ones, of which there are many, I want to expedite it so they can come back legally.”
And then:
“The dreamers, it’s a tough situation. We’re going to do something…..I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal….A lot of these people are helping us …..I want to move them out. I want to move them back in and let them be legal.” (Donald Trump)
63% of illegal immigrants would leave under this Trump policy if they were promised a path to citizenship, and 85% would do so if they were promised a path to citizenship. So it isn’t at all impossible to implement this policy, known as “touchback”. Indeed, although a similar idea was turned down in the Senate in 2007, it could be resurrected, maybe successfully.
But this is not what Trump voters wanted when they voted for him. They wanted Latinos gone. What will they do when they find that the former illegals are back in the US for good? Of course, Trump will blame someone else, deny he ever said this about the illegals. But, nonetheless, the Trumpeters will have been betrayed.
You make an excellent point. Fundamentally the US needs these people- the contribution they make to the agricultural industry in California is crucial. Trump’s plan doesn’t make much sense though. It would be far less economically disruptive to allow immigrants to apply for citizenship without having to leave the country. It seems pointless to deport people, only then to allow them all back in again.
Many Trump supporters didn’t just vote for reduced immigration in the future. They voted to remove the immigrants already here. But short of a politically unfeasible mass deportation program, they is nothing that can be done about America’s increasing proportion of Hispanic people, because of slightly higher birth rates, immigration (legal and illegal) and the fact that more white Americans are dying than being born. So yes, a feeling of betrayal seems inevitable.
Its exactly the same in the UK. Many people voted for Brexit, not just because they disapproved of future EU immigration, but because they resented the EU migrants already here. Again, short of a politically unfeasible and economically destructive deportation program, the proportion of EU citizens living in the UK is only going to grow. Sure, some might leave in the short term, but pressure on government from big businesses will prevent any restrictions of the sort Leave voters want. What will change (assuming we leave the Single Market) is that Britons will lose their automatic right to live, work and study anywhere in the EU. You were absolutely right when in an earlier post, you described Brexit as a ‘self inflicted wound.’