Since his unexpected victory in the election, President-elect Trump’s policy platform has been shifting erratically. It may be the case that Mr. Trump expertly adopted an effective façade during his campaign that he is now shedding in favour of a more realistic, presidential demeanour. Conversely, he may simply have had no understanding of the tangible restrictions and pressures that a president faces in office. Regardless of the forces behind the newfound malleability in Mr. Trump’s policy platform, some of the changes being made are welcomed.
Mr. Trump’s stance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a pertinent example. Whereas his campaign included repeated pledges to repeal the ACA, or Obamacare, Trump now acknowledges, with the help of suggestions from Obama himself, that the policy contains valuable clauses such as coverage for prior conditions and inclusion in family plans for those under 26. Mr. Trump’s shift in stance on the ACA suggests a certain degree of moderation and a desire, or at least willingness, to be pragmatic. In the same CBS interview that discussed the ACA, Trump expressed respect for the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, backed down on his undemocratic mission to “lock [Hilary Clinton] up”, and explicitly told his supporters, when the interviewer mentioned acts of violence, to “stop it,” a stark contrast from the sentiment he expressed at his campaign rallies.
Reflecting back over the past year, Trump broke from the conservatism preached by Republicans such as Ted Cruz ’92, and endorsed the right of trans people to use the facilities of their choice. He acknowledged the extremism of a total ban on immigration by Muslim people, and instead suggested extreme vetting for high-risk countries (certainly not a moderate alternative, but an improvement). He shifted from abolishing the federal minimum wage, to upholding it, to increasing it.
In general, Trump’s willingness to reconsider his policy stances, despite their often questionable, absurd, and even prejudicial starting points, presents a glimmer of hope that we may face four years of a flawed, yet moderate pragmatist. A glimmer.
There is, however, an area of the President-elect’s platform that, whilst also evolving, is far from anything that could be called rational. This area is immigration, specifically undocumented immigration, a topic on which Mr. Trump’s policies seem to be wavering wildly in search of a defensible stance, taking on blatantly condemnable forms, unable to find a pragmatic center.
In his campaign, Trump often suggested that he would aim to remove America’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Such a policy, however it would look like in practice, would be hugely detrimental to the United States. Not only would it involve tearing apart communities and uprooting families, it would punch the American economy in the metaphorical guts. Since his victory, President-elect Trump has reformed this proposition. Last Sunday, in his interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Trump suggested that he would exclusively aim to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records, of which he suggested there are between 2 and 3 million in the United States. Whilst the distinction between law-abiding and criminal undocumented immigrants might seem substantial, it is small in comparison to another distinction that Trump’s policies still fail to observe: the distinction between retroactive and non-retroactive immigration policy.
Immigrating to the United States is a privilege, one that is highly sought by many people around the world. It is, by no means, a right. That is to say, foreigners, like myself, obviously do not have the right to move to the United States without the permission of American citizens and that of the U.S. government. Those who disregard the U.S. government’s right and responsibility to regulate immigration assume the right to live in the United States. This is in contrast to the 4.4 million people who acknowledge and await the privilege. I do not believe that I overstep by saying that to overstay my F-1 visa, or to have entered the United States without a visa in the first the place, is wrong. Immigrating to America is a privilege, and nobody has the right to do so without permission.
However, it is one thing to assert this stance and prevent undocumented immigration, and another thing entirely to legislate and instantaneously seek to uproot those who have already found a place in the United States. This is where the distinction between retroactive and non-retroactive policy becomes critically important. Preventing future undocumented immigration is different to rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants, especially considering that, as the Center for Immigration Studies reports, over 66% of adult undocumented immigrants have been in the US for over a decade. Trump fails to acknowledge this distinction, and whilst toning down his policies from targeting 11 million to 3 million criminal undocumented immigrants may seem like a pragmatic concession, it still misses the fact that retroactive immigration policies will harm families, create fear in certain minority groups that include many U.S. citizens, and harm the American economy.
Paul Ryan, the Republican House Speaker, disagrees with the new President’s inclination to focus on rectifying past transgressions. Ryan says that he had expected Trump to focus on “securing the border,” rather than on rounding up undocumented immigrants. Granted, securing the border does focus on preventing future undocumented immigration rather than on retrospectively attacking those who are already here.
Such rhetoric centred around the idea of America’s southern border oversteps the only defensible stance in controlling immigration, which is that nobody has the right to immigrate without permission. Instead, while potentially motivated by this principle, the action ultimately inspires a prejudicial, Mexico-centric view of the issue of undocumented immigration. Indeed, progressive commentators in this debate raise a strong point in questioning the motives of Americans who are exclusively concerned, even obsessed, with undocumented immigration by Mexican citizens alone. The Pew Research Center reports that only 52 percent of undocumented immigrants come from Mexico, leaving half of America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants as citizens of other countries. To place a disproportionate emphasis on undocumented immigration as a solely Mexican issue sends an ulterior message to America’s Chicano and Latinx peoples as a disgraceful affront on a substantial, welcome, and valuable demographic of American society.
It is for this reason that the other side of President-elect Trump’s immigration platform, the infamous ‘wall,’ is still far from the pragmatic center. Conservatives must understand that liberals do not oppose the wall because they believe that people do have a right to immigrate without permission. They oppose the wall because it is a concentrated symbol of prejudice and ignorance. It is impossible to justify on pragmatic grounds. Its physical effectiveness in preventing border crossings is questionable. Its economic cost would likely rival the cost of income support for the American’s supposedly losing their jobs. Finally, only half of undocumented immigrants come from the country on the other side of the proposed wall, and it is a clear minority of recent undocumented immigrants that enter via the southern border anyway. In 2012, the vast majority entered legally, but overstayed their visas.
Yet just as there is a call on conservatives to think critically, liberals must also understand that conservatives do not necessarily support a wall because they are racist xenophobes, but rather because they want America to assert its right to control which of the many people hoping to immigrate can do so. This is a justifiable stance. The control that those concerned with this principle advocate for is all but completely lacking at present. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security states that 99% of undocumented immigrants who overstay their visas are never addressed by the federal government, and many of those who enter without a visa are never identified at all.
However, it is extremely important that this control is not exercised with prejudice, as Mr. Trump risks doing with a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border and his Islamophobic proposition of a blanket ban on Muslim immigrants, He need only look to the United States’ current system, of random lottery as the measure for green card allocation, enrolment for F-1 visas, qualification for H1-B visas, and UNHCR recognition for refugee status, to see an example of an objective, non-discriminatory system from which to model.
President-elect Trump ought to attempt to refine his views further, to identify and focus on the logical, defensible principle that has been misconstrued to inspire such dangerous, offensive, and ineffective policies. I would suggest that the principle in question is that the U.S. government, as a proxy of the American people, has the sovereign right to control who will live in America. How Mr. Trump interprets this principle, how he exercises this control, and whether he upholds the historic vision of a strong yet fair America will be the measure of his success in finding moderate ground within a polarized electorate.
Sam Parsons is a sophomore from Wangaratta, Australia. He can be reached at samueljp@princeton.edu.
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