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Story highlights
Donald Trump outlines his immigration plans
His policy paper also explains how he would get Mexico to pay for a border wall
CNN
—
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said Sunday he would overturn a law that grants citizenship to people born in the U.S. and put stricter limits on legal immigration, offering his most detailed account yet of how he would handle a policy issue that has become a cornerstone of his campaign.
Trump, who has repeatedly been pressed for specifics on his immigration plan since the issue rocketed him to the top of the polls, also explained for the first time how he will force Mexico to pay for a wall on its border with the U.S. in his nearly 1,900-word policy paper.
The proposal could help Trump swat away naysayers who charge that he is not a serious candidate. It also gives Trump an opportunity to burnish his conservative credentials, particularly as he is coming under more heavy fire from conservative influencers.
Trump took a shot at his Republican opponent Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, slamming what he calls the “Schumer-Rubio” comprehensive immigration bill, which passed the Senate in 2013 and later died in the House, as “nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties.”
Trump’s immigration plan is based on three core principles: that the U.S. must build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, that immigration laws must be fully enforced and that “any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.”
His policy mixes some long-held Republican proposals on immigration with ideas that are more likely to appeal to the far right.
Trump calls for requiring a nationwide system to verify workers’ legal status, tripling the number of immigrations and customs enforcement agents and implementing a tracking system to identify people who overstay their visas.
But Trump’s plans take a hardline approach in his vow to reverse a U.S. law that grants American citizenship to any child born in the United States, regardless of whether the child’s parents are undocumented immigrants.
He also calls for suspending the issuance of any new green cards, writing, “there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers.”
Trump’s policy proposal does not explain how long the pause will last.
Even Trump’s approach to the Dreamers – those who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children – goes a step further than others in the GOP field who believe children of undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S.
“The executive order gets rescinded,” Trump said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” of President Barack Obama’s executive order allowing dreamers to remain in the U.S.
“We have to keep the families together, but they have to go,” he told NBC.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
exclusive photo by nigel parry for CNN
President-elect Donald Trump has been in the spotlight for years. From developing real estate and producing and starring in TV shows, he became a celebrity long before winning the White House.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
Trump at age 4. He was born in 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump in New York City. His father was a real estate developer.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
Trump, left, in a family photo. He was the second-youngest of five children.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
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Trump, center, stands at attention during his senior year at the New York Military Academy in 1964.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
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Trump, center, wears a baseball uniform at the New York Military Academy in 1964. After he graduated from the boarding school, he went to college. He started at Fordham University before transferring and later graduating from the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania's business school.
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Trump stands with Alfred Eisenpreis, New York's economic development administrator, in 1976 while they look at a sketch of a new 1,400-room renovation project of the Commodore Hotel. After graduating college in 1968, Trump worked with his father on developments in Queens and Brooklyn before purchasing or building multiple properties in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Those properties included Trump Tower in New York and Trump Plaza and multiple casinos in Atlantic City.
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Trump attends an event to mark the start of construction of the New York Convention Center in 1979.
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Trump wears a hard hat at the Trump Tower construction site in New York in 1980.
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Trump was married to Ivana Zelnicek Trump from 1977 to 1990, when they divorced. They had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.
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The Trump family, circa 1986.
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Trump uses his personal helicopter to get around New York in 1987.
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Trump stands in the atrium of the Trump Tower.
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Trump attends the opening of his new Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1989.
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Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump has published at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."
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Trump and singer Michael Jackson pose for a photo before traveling to visit Ryan White, a young child with AIDS, in 1990.
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Trump dips his second wife, Marla Maples, after the couple married in a private ceremony in New York in December 1993. The couple divorced in 1999 and had one daughter together, Tiffany.
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Trump putts a golf ball in his New York office in 1998.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
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An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Tower in 2004. The show launched in January of that year. In January 2008, the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice."
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A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.
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Trump attends a news conference in 2005 that announced the establishment of Trump University. From 2005 until it closed in 2010, Trump University had about 10,000 people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp rejected the suits' claims as "baseless." And Trump has charged that the New York case against him is politically motivated.
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Trump attends the U.S. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron, in 2006. Trump and Knauss married in 2005.
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Trump wrestles with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania in 2007. Trump has close ties with the WWE and its CEO, Vince McMahon.
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For "The Apprentice," Trump was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007.
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Trump appears on the set of "The Celebrity Apprentice" with two of his children -- Donald Jr. and Ivanka -- in 2009.
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Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in 2011. Trump had been executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants since 1996.
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In 2012, Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Photos: Donald Trump: America's 45th President
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Trump speaks in Sarasota, Florida, after accepting the Statesman of the Year Award at the Sarasota GOP dinner in August 2012. It was shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa.
Photos: Donald Trump: America's 45th President
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Trump appears on stage with singer Nick Jonas and television personality Giuliana Rancic during the 2013 Miss USA pageant.
Trump -- flanked by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, left, and Ted Cruz -- speaks during a CNN debate in Miami on March 10. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.
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The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April.
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Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April 28. After Trump won the Indiana primary, his last two competitors dropped out of the GOP race.
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Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President. "I have had a truly great life in business," he said. "But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country -- to go to work for you. It's time to deliver a victory for the American people."
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Trump faces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate, which took place in Hempstead, New York, in September.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
Donald Trump/Twitter
Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize," Trump said, referring to lewd comments he made during a previously unaired taping of "Access Hollywood." Multiple Republican leaders rescinded their endorsements of Trump after the footage was released.
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Trump walks on stage with his family after he was declared the election winner on November 9. "Ours was not a campaign, but rather, an incredible and great movement," he told his supporters in New York.
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Trump is joined by his family as he is sworn in as President on January 20.
While Trump has called for deporting all of the undocumented immigrants in the United States and allowing “the good ones,” to re-enter legally, his policy outline makes no mention of that plan. Instead, it calls for deporting all “criminal aliens.” It does not address the deportation of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants.
Trump also explained how he would force the Mexican government to bankroll a wall along the southern border.
If Mexico refuses to pay for the wall, a Trump administration would begin charging additional fees to Mexicans who come into the U.S. on visas or with border crossing cars – particularly for visas to “Mexican CEOs and diplomats,” which Trump would cancel “if necessary.” Trump’s plan also calls for possible tariffs and foreign aid cuts and would seize “all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.”
“The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. They are responsible for this problem, and they must help pay to clean it up,” Trump wrote. “We will not be taken advantage of anymore.”
“The extremism is stunning, and the direction is dangerous,” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of pro-immigration group America’s Voice. “Trump’s ‘plan’ would create a police state capable of rounding up and deporting all 11 million hardworking immigrant families settled in America.”
Sharry also criticized Trump’s move to change the birthright citizenship rules and put further limits on legal immigration.
“Fortunately, these marginalized ideas are as unpopular as they are unworkable, and thus will never happen,” he said.
“In much the same way that we enforce most civil laws in this country, the plan aims at deterring most violations of the law, and provides meaningful penalties for those who are not deterred,” spokesman Ira Mehlman said in an email.
But Trump’s immigration plan would surely draw stiff opposition from Democrats in Congress, but it’s also likely to raise alarm with the big business, a major proponent of high-skilled visas.
The price tag for his plan could draw the ire of Republicans, too.
A 2013 bipartisan immigration bill that cleared the Senate called for doubling the number of border patrol agents and completing some 700 miles of fence along the border. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegged the cost of the bill around $23 billion, mainly because of the security measures included.
Ultimately, the CBO said the Senate bill would have reduced the federal deficit by legalizing millions of immigrants living in the country illegally and, in turn, boosting tax revenues. The CBO also said that legislation would spur economic growth.
Trump’s plan, however, does not include those revenue-generating provisions.
To prevent additional undocumented immigrants for entering and staying in the United States, Trump pledged to “defund sanctuary cities” – stripping cities of federal dollars if they do not fully cooperate with federal immigration officials – establish a nationwide employment “e-verify” system, and end the “catch-and-release” policy of detaining illegal immigrants without deporting them.
While most of Trump’s brash rhetoric has focused on ending illegal immigration peppered with charges that immigrants coming from Mexico are “killers” and “rapists,” Trump has also advocated for streamlining the legal U.S. immigration system.
There was little mention of that in his latest policy proposal. Instead, it relied heavily on plans designed to protect American jobs from foreign workers and called for tighter rules on visas for high-skilled workers. In crafting his plan, Trump sought advice from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a longtime supporter of curbing both legal and illegal immigration.
“The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans – including immigrants themselves and their children – to earn a middle class wage,” Trump wrote in his proposal.
Trump’s first policy paper comes somewhat begrudgingly. In a press conference Saturday, he downplayed voters’ interest in such policy specifics, calling them a preoccupation of the press.
“I think the press is more eager to see it than the voters, to be honest,” Trump told reporters in Iowa Sunday. “I don’t think the people care. I think they trust me. I think they know I’m going to make good deals for them.”
