Is Trump's Ten-Point Immigration Plan a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

Is Trump's Ten-Point Immigration Plan a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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Donald Trump is not an idiot, but his plan cannot be implemented, which makes it sound and fury, signifying nothing.

1. We will build a wall along the Southern Border. The United States has been erecting barriers along the border with Mexico since 1990, when it constructed a 66-mile fence along the California coast to deter illegal immigration. And bills authorizing the erection of barriers along the border with Mexico have been supported by both parties. In fact, when Hillary Clinton was a senator, she and 26 other Democratic senators voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the building of 700 miles of physical barriers along the border with Mexico. Only 17 Democratic senators voted against it. In the House, 64 Democrats voted for it and 131 against it. An attempt also has been made to construct a virtual wall across the entire 2000-mile border, the Secure Border Initiative. The project ended up being a very costly fiasco. Can Trump succeed where others have failed and construct a wall across the entire border?

2. End Catch-And-Release. Trump claims that under his Administration, undocumented aliens who illegally cross the border will be detained until they can be deported. Catch and release has been going on for a very long time. Mexicans who are caught crossing the border illegally can be sent back to Mexico the next day. Aliens who are not Mexicans, known as Other than Mexicans (OTMs), will not be accepted by the Mexican government. They have to be deported to their own countries. This typically takes a substantial amount of time to arrange and DHS does not have enough detention facilities to detain them while the arrangements are being made, so they are released and most are never seen again. Detention facilities already are in short supply. How is Trump going to provide the additional facilities that would be needed to stop this practice?

3. Zero tolerance for criminal aliens. Trump would remove every alien who commits a crime, but our immigration laws do not make every criminal offense a deportation ground.

4. Block funding for sanctuary cities. This refers to cities that refuse to cooperate with DHS on immigration enforcement matters. He would prevent them from receiving any taxpayer dollars. He would need congressional cooperation to make this happen, and congressmen are not known for cooperating with measures that would hurt their constituents.

5. Cancel unconstitutional executive orders and enforce all immigration laws. In 2012, President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, which grants temporary lawful status to young adults who came to the United States as children. In November 2014, he established the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans Program, which grants the same relief. Trump can end these programs by issuing executive orders cancelling them, but enforcing all immigration laws is another matter. Still, an attempt to enforce the laws would eliminate one of the magnets that would draw undocumented aliens to the United States under Hillary Clinton if she were to become the president. She has said that she will limit deportation to aliens who are serious criminals. Anyone who manages to reach the interior of our country would be safe from deportation unless convicted of a serious crime.

6. We are going to suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur. We do not have the personnel or other resources to do the kind of screening he is talking about even in countries where it would be possible to do it.

7. We will ensure that other countries take their people back when we order them deported. According to statistics provided by ICE, in FY2015, ICE released 19,723 criminal aliens who had a total of 64,197 convictions. This included 101 homicide convictions, 216 kidnapping convictions, 320 sexual assault convictions, 352 commercialized sexual offenses, 1,347 domestic violence convictions, 1,728 assault convictions, and 12,307 driving under the influence of alcohol convictions. But only 89 of them were released because their countries had not agreed to take them back.

8. We will finally complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system. Under this system, a record is made of every entry by alien visitor and again when the visitor leaves. Trump says he will ensure that it is in place at all land, air, and sea ports. It can be done at air ports and I do not know about sea ports, but it is impossible at land ports. There isn’t enough time to do it with a million entries a year at the border with Mexico alone, and there is not enough space for exit lanes. But that is not the only problem. The first legal requirement for an entry-exit system was enacted in 1996. I was counsel to the Democrats at the hearing for consideration of implementing this provision. We blocked it with a single question, “Would the system have any enforcement value?” The answer was “no.” It would identify alien visitors who had not left the country when their authorized visits were finished, but it would not provide any information on where they are. You would not have any way of finding them. The idea was dropped until the 9/11 Commission brought it back years later.

9. We will turn off the jobs and benefits magnet. The way to do it would be to enforce the employer sanctions that were established by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). People have been working on implementing this program for 30 years now and it still has not happened.

10. We will reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers. Not possible without strong bipartisan support, which is not at all likely.

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