America will pay for the folly of Trump
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 2, 2016
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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a running campaign at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix of Arizona Aug. 31, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Chaoqun) |
After a brief visit to Mexico to meet Enrique Peña Nieto, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump returned to the United States to deliver a much ballyhooed speech on immigration.
After suggesting he was "softening" his position on illegal immigration, a promised speech to clarify was pushed back numerous times. Now. he has finally given the speech, it proves not to have clarified very much; the muddle still remains.
While being interviewed on August 23 by Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, one of his biggest supporters, Trump suggested he might let some illegal immigrants stay in the country and become legal residents. He raised the hypothetical example of an illegal immigrant who has lived in America with his family for 20 years - let them stay or force them out?
He has also talked in the past about the possibility of letting those who pay their back taxes stay. It was a big departure from his long-repeated proposal to round up all the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants with a "deportation force" and kick them out. However, this was absent from the latest speech.
Instead he focused on claiming that he would deport illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in America. He prefaced his argument by claiming President Obama's administration had been too lenient with such people and didn't deport enough of them.
However, according to data cited by ABC News, the Obama administration has actually deported more people than any other in American history - 2.5 million people. The previous Republican administration of George W. Bush got rid of some 2 million. Of those, more than 50 percent were convicted of non-immigration-related crimes.
On the other hand, the number of deportations has been dropping since 2012, with the lowest number on record in the past decade in 2015, a number Trump might cite if he really cares about numbers. But one possible reason for the drop, however, could be that the number of illegal immigrants coming to America has also fallen in the past eight years.
Trump wasn't even sure about how many illegal immigrants there are in the United States. "It could be three million…..It could be 30 million." Trump has a well-known propensity for repeating conspiracy theories and making unverified claims, but the number of illegal immigrants in the country, according to most sources, is always cited as between 10 and 12 million.
While he left his deportation plan blowing in the wind, one thing Trump remains clear on is his determination to build a wall right along the southern U.S. border, although he never explains how America will pay for such a wall.
In his speech, he again made the strange claim that, "Mexico will pay for the wall." But at the meeting with Mexico's president, Trump claims they never talked about this. Peña Nieto, probably a more credible source than Trump, said that they did discuss it and that he made it clear, as in the past, that Mexico wouldn't contribute.
And why should it? The wall bestows no benefits on Mexico. It is just a waste of money that, if anything, would hurt Mexico and would not really help the United States.
"They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for it," Trump insisted in his usual blustering tone.
As usual with a Trump speech, it included its fair share of conspiratorial ramblings and character smears of his opponents. He called America's immigration laws a "Trojan Horse." He said that there were some kind of phantom facts that support his argument but that "the facts aren't known because the media won't report them."
He displayed his mathematical proficiency by lying that his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton wants to welcome 600,000 Syrian refugees. In fact, it's 10 times less.
Trump's press conference ended by parading parents onstage whose children had been murdered by illegal immigrants. The very unsubtle point was to create an association between illegal immigration and murder. Many studies have found that both legal and illegal immigrants are no more likely than American-born citizens to commit violent crimes.
Some newspaper writers, pundits, and conservative activists are trying to portray Trump's speech and meeting in Mexico as an example of Trump "being presidential." That only shows how low Trump has pushed standards by his behavior. In fact, Trump is continuing to spout empty rhetoric at best and unhinged lies at worst. If his speech sounded good, that's not because it was a good speech, it's just because his previous speeches were terrible.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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