Substance. Perhaps the greatest domestic policy since the Reagan tax cuts.
While most of the permanent political class is still aghast that 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump put together one of most specific, pro-American worker immigration plans of anyone running for public office, he’s winning widespread praise from key experts on the issue.
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian told Breitbart News that he’s pleased Trump is drawing a focus to this issue and his plan is spot on.
Krikorian said in an email:
The first notable thing about Trump’s immigration plan are the three principles it lays out. Immigration policy must be based exclusively on the interest of We the People of the United States, not wealthy donors, not corporations, not union bosses, not big-city politicians, and not foreign citizens. Why every candidate of every party hasn’t already said this is a mystery. Many of the specifics are also sound: E-Verify, visa-tracking, cutting off aid to sanctuary cities, making overstay of a visa a criminal offense, tightening up on H-1B visas, etc. His support for moderating our current very high levels of legal immigration is welcome, though I look forward to more specifics — which visa categories should be reduced or eliminated? Also, I think the antagonism toward Mexico in the first section is not helpful — Mexico is indeed obstructionist in many areas, though it is helpful in others (for instance, by interdicting many of the Central American illegals headed north). Our approach to our neighbor to the south must be firm, but not ham-handed. But overall, none of the other Republican (or Democratic) candidates (with the exception of Rick Santorum) has as sound and as well thought-through an immigration plan.
In addition, conservative columnist Ann Coulter—author of 11 New York Times bestselling books, including Adios America: The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hellhole—Tweeted immense praise for Trump’s new document all day Sunday.
In one Tweet, Coulter called the plan “the greatest political document since the Magna Carta.” In another, she said Trump’s plan proves “IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Coulter, who supported Mitt Romney in 2012 because he was the strongest candidate on immigration that year, Tweeted that Trump’s document is the first of its kind since President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” back in the 1950s.
“We haven’t seen anything like this since Dwight Eisenhower’s ‘Operation Wetback,’” she Tweeted. “Even @MittRomney wasn’t this pro-American on immigration.”
She also noted that there is no issue of political significance that matters as much as this, because if policies like Trump’s aren’t implemented, then Democrats will win national elections for decades straight and Republicans won’t be able to stop anything bad from becoming law. “Nothing else matters. Unless we stop 3rd worlders pouring in, bloc-voting 4 the Dems, conservatives lose EVERYTHING,” Coulter Tweeted.
Without Trump’s “immigration plan, it will be nothing but Obamas and Hillarys as president for the rest of our lives,” Coulter Tweeted after mocking Republicans party-wide for putting out position papers on issues of less significance than stopping the Democrats from fundamentally transforming the American electorate.
“These morons with their little position papers on how to replace Obamacare, deal with Iran and defund planned parenthood,” Coulter Tweeted, adding in a follow-up Tweet, “too stupid to grasp that they’ll never be in a position to do any of that unless we stop foreigners from voting in our elections.”
She also predicted that Republicans will attempt to “bury” Trump for “upsetting the donor class,” so it’s important “to get them on the record” now. She’s making the comparison between those attacking Trump and those who attacked Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, and wants a record of who’s attacking Trump now “so 30 yrs from now, when all the little dweebs are claiming to be ‘Trump conservatives,’ we can say, no UR not.”
Coulter also Tweeted several quotes from the Trump document, including where Trump talks about turning refugee programs instead into jobs programs for American youths—and where Trump calls Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “personal senator.” Zuckerberg, of course, runs a lobbying firm called FWD.us designed to push for more cheap foreign labor, especially extra H-1B visas.
She then noted that Trump is the “only candidate who cares” about “black lives” since his immigration plan “will increase black, Hispanic, female workers” in Silicon Valley, rather than decreasing such American workers who are black, Hispanic or female, as Rubio’s push to bring in foreign workers would do.
In addition to Coulter and Krikorian, obviously, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)—the intellectual leader of the conservative movement and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest—backed it publicly already. Trump consulted Sessions while writing it.
ComputerWorld magazine, a top trade magazine that’s honed in heavily on the H-1B scandal issue, noted how Trump’s position puts him in line with the chairman of the full Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), as well. It’s also got bipartisan support from folks like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a devout socialist who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for president and has been getting large crowds similar to Trump’s among GOP audiences, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Democratic Whip in the U.S. Senate.
“Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, may be closer to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in his criticisms of the H-1B visa than any of his fellow Republicans seeking the presidential nomination. Sanders, an Independent who is seeking the Democrat presidential nomination, says the H-1B program is being used to help ship jobs overseas,” Patrick Thibodeau, ComputerWorld’s senior editor, wrote on Sunday. “Trump’s H-1B proposal is clearly aligned with the ideas of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Grassley’s longtime ally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — not to mention Sessions.”
Aligning with Grassley—in addition to Sessions, who’s beloved in conservative and GOP circles, of course—puts Trump in a prime position in the all-important first presidential state of Iowa, where, along with everywhere else, he’s currently polling as the GOP frontrunner. Grassley is the senior U.S. Senator from Iowa, and it’s clear Trump’s position is his position, meaning that should Trump be elected president he’d be aiming to implement Grassley’s ideas in the White House.
“The intellectual roots of Trump’s H-1B views can be found in its links, which includes the testimony and work of two of leading academic critics, Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University, and Hal Salzman, professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, who studies the science and engineering workforce,” Thibodeau added in his ComputerWorld piece. “In previous presidential campaigns, the H-1B visa has been notable mainly by its absence. By making it major part of his immigration platform, Trump is clearly raising the issue’s profile and may force other candidates to engage on it. That alone could lead to a much broader debate about the H-1B visa than ever before.”
