Donald Trump's Insane Immigration Plan Would Add 10,000 Federal Employees
Conservatives praise a deeply un-conservative plan.
Donald Trump has released a position paper on immigration outlining his plan to "make America great again" by forcing Mexico to build a wall on the U.S.'s southern border, increasing tariffs, deporting all illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, forcing companies to implement E-Verify, obligating employers to choose American workers instead of immigrants, and hiring 10,000 new federal employees.
Is this really what Trump's so-called conservative defenders in the media want: A massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy combined with distortive, crippling regulation of private business?
Apparently, yes. From The Blaze:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump unveiled his official position on immigration reform over the weekend and some conservative commentators were exceedingly supportive.
In fact, Ann Coulter tweeted Sunday she believed his plan was "the greatest political document since the Magna Carta" and so good she didn't care if Trump "wants to perform abortions in the White House after this immigration policy paper."
That's high praise for a plan that would triple the size of a federal agency (ICE) while giving the government much greater cause to interfere in the affairs of all Americans—both native-born and immigrant—and harass businesses large and small.
People who describe themselves as conservatives shouldn't need to be reminded of this, but such a plan would be economically ruinous if implemented. It ignores the considerable benefits of immigration and immigrant workers. The overwhelming consensus among economists is that immigrant labor is a huge boon to the economy—boosting wages, creating jobs, and lowering the price of goods. When the government prevents immigrants from doing the jobs they want to do, it slows down the engine of economic growth. Again, conservatives must understand this on some level, given that they can typically be found lamenting that government regulation is killing the economy. They know that EPA compliance kills jobs. Labor-related regulatory compliance isn't any different.
It's a very sad commentary on the state of the modern Republican Party that its current frontrunner is not a conservative on any issue—from taxes to abortion to free trade to friendship with the Clinton regime. He isn't even a true conservative on immigration; if conservatism is even tangentially related to the idea that government should get out of the way so that private enterprise can flourish, Trump's position should disqualify him from the label.
Interestingly enough, the candidate whose rhetoric on immigration and labor most closely matches Trump's is Democrat Bernie Sanders, who betrays his own camp's stance on the humanitarian necessity of opening up the nation's borders. Irrational hatred of immigrants and disdain for economic thinking has infected both parties' presidential contests, and it's a shame to see so many people taken in by ugly and destructive ideas that would impoverish them if implemented.
Related: More on the similarities between Trump and Sanders here and here.