Trump's immigration plan is not just "Mexico build wall with leprechaun gold" type of nonsense. It's an actual, implementable plan, and it's making me physically ill.
Take the wall. Trump keeps saying he'll make the Mexican government pay for the wall. But as Dara Lind notes, Trump isn't proposing to make the Mexican government pay for the wall. He's proposing to make Mexican people pay for the wall.
Trump's idea is to confiscate the money unauthorized immigrants send to their (extremely, extremely poor) relatives back home, increase fees on a visa program NAFTA created for (legal) Mexican workers, increase fees on the border crossing cards used by Mexicans who (legally) cross in and out of the United States to work, increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats, and increase fees on ports of entry to the United States from Mexico.
In other words, Trump has no actual mechanism to make the Mexican government build a wall across the border. But his plan, such as it exists, is to inflict so much pain on Mexican people who need to cross the border legally, and on poor communities that depend on remittances from relatives in the United States, that the Mexican government buckles and builds the wall. Or maybe the plan isn't to have them build the wall, but to simply raise revenue under the guise of trying to pressure Mexico to build the wall.
What's important to understand about this plan, though, is that it's fundamentally an act of collective punishment. Most of these ideas punish legal immigrants for the actions of people coming here illegally.
I'm officially out of laffs now, and I think I need a
long, refreshing break from Trump, and maybe a short break from internet in general.
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Topic: **Containment Zone for Hazardous Human Waste** [Trump Thread] (Read 3701 times)