Immigration Crackdown a Top Trump Priority

President-elect Donald Trump won the presidency campaigning on a promise of a far-reaching immigration crackdown, and it looks like he intends to keep it. Trump listed immigration as one of his top three priorities on Thursday:

We’re gonna look very strongly at immigration; we’re gonna look at the border. We’re gonna look very strongly at health care, and we’re looking at jobs — big league jobs.

His Contract With the American Voter includes canceling every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama. That would include Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the 2012 program that has protected from deportation 750,000 young people brought to the U.S. illegally.

According to Gary Harmon, Canceling the deferred action program likely means that the program will accept no new participants and those now in it will be allowed to complete their two-year work permits. Once the program’s participant’s paperwork expires, participants will be unlikely to face any deportation because Trump is going to focus on criminal aliens as they come out of jails and prisons.

Trump can also end Obama’s 2014 executive action, currently blocked by the courts, to extend that DACA deportation reprieve to some four million undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes. Both of those Obama programs can be ended without approval from Congress.

The immigration section of Trump’s presidential transition website reaffirms his plans to “cancel unconstitutional executive orders”

There will be repercussions for the 23 nations that decline to accept criminals that the United States deports. That might include the likely loss of visas to the United States for legal visits.

Trump’s Contract also includes canceling all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities. In addition it calls for introducing legislation to end Illegal Immigration. That bill will fully-fund the construction of a wall on our southern border, with the understanding that Mexico will reimburse the United States for the full cost of the wall; establish a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

Trump has added Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to his transition team. Kobach helped draft controversial restrictionist immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama. Kobach promises that there will be “a lot of changes.”

Trump has also been relying on Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, another immigration restrictionist, for advice on policy.

A wall on the Southern border is estimated to cost possibly $25 billion.

Getting Trump’s End Illegal Immigration Act through the Senate won’t be easy with Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer as the new Senate Minority Leader. We almost accomplished immigration reform in 2006. Senate Republicans reached a compromise on the status millions illegals in the U.S. The compromise would have treated illegal aliens differently based upon the length of time they have been in the U.S. But According to the Associated Press and Eleanor Clift the Democrats, led by Schumer, wanted a political advantage more than they wanted immigration reform.

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