Aug 17^th

Donald Trump, at last, has come out with a policy statement about immigration and immigrants. We know he will build a wall and we know he will get the Mexican government to pay for it and we know that he won’t tell anyone how he will get the Mexican government to do that¹. He told Chuck Todd that everyone would be “so pleased” after four years of his Presidency. Trump is the quintessential salesman. I can hear him now, under more modest circumstances of course, after selling the retired minister a five year old Chevy, “You will be so pleased.” And Reverend Roberts will be pleased too, just on the basis of the force and sincerity of that salesman’s hypnotic personality.

Setting aside the wall and how Trump will make Mexico pay for it, we have the problem with what to do with illegal immigrants who are already here. In some cases the immigrants have been here for years, have worked here and paid taxes here and have children who were born here. Trump tells Chuck Todd that he will send them all back. That will be quite an undertaking because there about 6 million of them and that might not count dependents; no matter, Trump will send them all back.

In spite of the obvious problems with this plan Trump does have some support: Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the junior Senator from Alabama, Selma Alabama in fact, thinks Trump’s plan is just fine. Perhaps the Senator has invested in air lines serving Mexico and Central America. (It is really hard not to be snarky with this nonsense.) Consider that Trump claims that he will not separate families; this means that he plans to deport children born in this country which clearly violates the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution. According to this amendment children born in this country are citizens. If Trump deports these families, a process now clearly illegal he will have to find and then pen up about 12 million people until he can find enough empty airplanes to transport them to the countries they came from.

Then he has another problem: Suppose the countries in question are in no mood to receive several hundred thousand people who will arrive without jobs, with many of their adolescent children no longer even speaking the language. Trump nowhere discusses what he will do if one of these countries tells a plane carrying emigrants it can’t land. That’s OK, I’m sure that Trump will just make these countries accept the people who left years ago for life in the United States.

¹Now comes an article from “Fortune” just today about Trumps plan to pay for the wall. Trump claims that Mexicans in this country remit 22 billion dollars to relatives in Mexico. He would confiscate that money. Unfortunately that includes the money sent to Mexico by all Mexicans both legals and illegals. Confiscating money sent by U.S. citizens to relatives in Mexico would hardly be legal. Then there is the likely shift from traceable wire transfers used now to untraceable digital and bitcoin transfers which cannot be traced and are cheaper. Oh Pshaw, maybe Donald will have to settle for a wall just three feet high.