Last month the debate about illegal immigration shifted sharply against those who believed indifference or even resistance to attempts to enforce the rule of law. The murder of a San Francisco woman by an illegal immigrant who had been released by authorities acting on the authority of a sanctuary city law highlighted a serious problem. Liberals, including Hillary Clinton, found themselves on the defensive with no way to explain why Democrats had backed such clearly dangerous proposals. But today Americans woke up to a new immigration debate and the 14th Amendment that has given the left back the moral high ground and put Republicans in the soup. Donald Trump has wrongly claimed credit for putting illegal immigration back on the nation’s front burner. But it must be acknowledged that he deserves all the blame for this one. By proposing an end to birthright citizenship and wrongly claiming that the courts have never ruled on whether it applies even to the children of foreigners born in the United States, he has led the GOP down a rabbit hole from which there may be no escape. Thanks to the Donald, Americans have stopped worrying about sanctuary cities or even how best to secure the border and instead are the astonished onlookers to a sterile debate about stripping native-born Americans of their citizenship and fantasies about deporting 11 million illegals.
The element of Trump’s plan to deal with illegal immigration that has gotten the most attention is his proposal to strip the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States of their citizenship. Doing so involves overturning an interpretation of the law that goes back virtually to the beginning of the republic. Moreover, contrary to the assertions of Trump and his backers, the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue when it decided in 1898 that the 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all those born in this country even if their parents were foreigners.
Nevertheless, Trump’s idea has now spawned a growing debate principally on the right about whether that concept is firmly rooted in constitutional law. Some saw it can be ended by presidential fiat in the manner of President Obama’s extralegal executive orders. Others believe the Supreme Court can, if given a case on which a ruling might be based, overturn the precedent. Still others, more sensibly, point out that the best way to end birthright citizenship would be to pass a new constitutional amendment.
For those who like arcane legal arguments, this is great entertainment. But what those conservatives who have eagerly tumbled down the rabbit hole with Trump on the issue are forgetting is that we are in the middle of a presidential election, not a law school bull session.
It must be acknowledged that although Trump’s proposal about citizenship has as little chance of being put into effect as the deportation of all 11 million illegals, it is nevertheless quite popular in some precincts. Trump’s popularity rests in his willingness to articulate the anger that many Americans feel about injustices or the failure of government to deal with problems. If there are 11 million illegals in the country, they want them all to be chucked out. If they have children here, who are, by law, U.S. citizens, they say, so what? Chuck them out too.
The question of what to do with illegals already here is a problem that vexes anyone that isn’t inclined, as President Obama and the Democrats are, to grant them amnesty and forget about it. Reasonable people can differ about possible solutions to the problem but there’s nothing reasonable or practical about a proposal that assumes the U.S. government is capable of capturing and deporting 11 million people plus the untold number of U.S. citizens to which they have given birth.
The notion that the American people will stomach such an exercise or pay what Politicoestimates (probably conservatively) the $166 billion it would cost to pull off such a horrifying spectacle is a pure fantasy.
What needs to be emphasized here is that wherever you stand on birthright citizenship or mass deportations, so long as it is these ideas that Republicans are discussing (as Trump did last night with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News), then they are losing the debate about immigration and very likely the next presidential election. No one is going to be elected president on a platform of depriving people born in this country of citizenship no matter who their parents might be. Nor, despite the cheers Trump gets from his fans, will the American people ever countenance the kinds of intrusive measures and the huge expansion of the federal immigration bureaucracy and police powers that would be needed to pull off a mass deportation.
Let’s be clear. This isn’t a matter of appeasing a Hispanic vote that is probably locked up for the Democrats even if the GOP nominates a pro-amnesty Hispanic. It’s about derailing a productive discussion about real-world solutions to problems into an ideological trap that will only convince moderates and independents, and probably some conservatives as well, that the Republicans are not ready for prime time.
These are the same voters who are likely to agree with Republicans when they say any immigration reform must only come after the border is secured by reasonable measures rather than by reconstructing the Great Wall of China or perhaps the epic ice wall from “Game of Thrones” on the Rio Grande that will be paid for by Mexico in Trump’s dreams. These voters were horrified by the murder of Kate Steinle and support efforts by the Republicans to pass a “Kate’s Law” that would penalize Democrat-run cities that flout federal authority to the detriment of the rule of law and the safety of citizens. They want the border to be secured and are disturbed by Obama’s efforts to circumvent the constitution to grant amnesty. But they aren’t likely to applaud Trump’s effort to ignore settled law or throw out American-born kids.
The point is, contrary to the conventional wisdom of the liberal mainstream media, a conservative stance on illegal immigration is a political winner for Republicans so long as they stick to points on which they have a clear advantage. But when they follow Trump into circular debates about birthright citizenship or fantasize about throwing all illegals out, including citizens or children raised here, they are losing the voters they need to win back the presidency.
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