Trump on immigration: his first broken promise

Exactly two weeks from today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president of the United States of America.

It has been more than a year since Donald Trump during his presidential campaign promised to deport ALL illegal immigrants, not just some of them, but all, every single one of them. No amnesty for anybody, no special considerations, nothing, zilch. It was one of his most solid and persistent promises, based on the premise that if the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants now in the USA are thrown out just as promised, there will be millions of jobs available to US citizens, those jobs currently in the hands of those unwanted illegal aliens. That was his promise.

But after being elected, Trump lowered the target number considerably. He no longer talks of deporting 11 millions or so undocumented aliens. He now talks about deporting two, possibly up to three, million undocumented aliens. This has been taken by many as a very significant softening in his harsh rhetoric and as a slap in the face to many of those who voted for him believing in his most radical promise.

If we take him at his word (something extremely hard to do in the case of a man who is wholly unpredictable), there is a major flaw in the target number he is now giving. It lies in the fact that president Obama has deported 2.5 million undocumented aliens between 2009 and 2015, which is precisely the average amount of those that president elect Trump now promises to deport. Indeed, Barack Obama has deported more aliens than any other president in the history of the USA. Indeed, president Barack Obama has often been referred to by immigration groups as the “Deporter in Chief”. So, considering the numbers, what exactly is the difference between what Trump is promising now and what president Obama has already done?

Donald Trump stated during his campaign that he would deport every single undocumented alien now living in the USA regardless of his contributions to the USA, which may include people such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Mario Molina if they are not in the USA legally. But now, for the time being, he is restricting his view of those who will be deported to only those who have previously committed a crime. But the cold truth is that this criteria is not new, it is no different from the current criteria being applied by president Obama himself. Last year, in 2015, 95 per cent of all deportees were previously convicted of a crime. So what exactly is the difference between what Trump has stated he will do and what is already being done by the now fading administration? The new Trump deportation plan appears to be nothing more than a “Copy and Paste” version of the Obama policies now in motion, a “me too” course of action. Indeed, judging from the numbers and the criteria to be used, the Trump plan to be implemented regarding illegal immigration and the criteria to be used for those who will be deported now seems to be no different from the current policies and criteria used by Barack Obama. So why vote for Donald Trump, if the things offered by him are no different from what the Democrats are already doing?

It all comes down to this: did Trump say all those things he said as candidate just to get elected?

Regardless of what he does, one thing Trump has already achieved even before he takes office is to polarize the US society in such a manner that the damage will be long lasting, spilling hatred all over and emboldening far right groups who are more than encouraged by his pick of Chief of Staff. By his own example, Trump has shown that anyone who as candidate gets the support of xenophobes and racists by using a xenophobic and racist language can aspire to become president of the USA, and this message will keep on being used by those who promote deep racial bigotry and hatred, a message completely different from the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the Republican party. And if he now limits himself by lowering down considerably the number of those he plans to deport, from 11 million to 2 million, deporting only those with criminal records and retaining all others inside the USA under a virtual quasi-amnesty (which, by the way, is the current status quo), it is likely he will attract the anger of hundreds of thousands of those who voted for him and who will feel betrayed by the same tycoon who told people what they wanted to hear just to get elected. But, hey! We are talking about Donald Trump! Did those who voted for Trump really expect more from him?

And, by the way, not all of the 11 million or so undocumented aliens are Mexicans. It has been estimated that, out of those 11 million or so, Mexicans only made up about 52 per cent of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, and even that number has been steadily dwindling. The rest are from other parts of the world, and the Mexican government is in no disposition as it used to be in the past of simply letting the US Border Patrol and US Immigration dump those aliens into Mexico as the US federal government used to do in the past, from now on they will all have to be flown to whatever countries they came from, and in the case of Irish, Pakistani, Hindu and Colombians, just to name a few, that deportation of millions of illegal aliens in commercial flights may end up costing the US taxpayers more than the current unpayable US National Debt. Perhaps this is the reason why Trump has switched gears and is reneging on making good on one of his most important promises. Perhaps Barack Obama had it right all along.