Why Trump’s immigration speech was a game changer

Source: News Corp Australia Network:

September 2, 2016 at 11:50

IN 2001, John Howard delivered his famous line-in-the-sand speech on illegal immigration and border protection. “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” the former PM told his election campaign launch in Sydney.

On Wednesday night, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had his Howard moment. “You cannot obtain legal status, or become a citizen of the United States, by illegally entering our country,” he told a packed crowd in Phoenix, Arizona.

There was much more in the hour-long policy speech, which came just hours after Trump’s dash to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, but this was his core message: that there would be no “amnesty” for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in America.

That immigration laws — the laws that give “illegal” immigrants their name — would be enforced. That the rights and safety of American taxpayers and citizens should be put first.

That people living in the country illegally should never have the same rights as an American citizen, or be able to obtain benefits at the expense of the American taxpayer.

That foreign criminals should be deported immediately, and, yes, that Americans have a right to choose who comes to their country, and the circumstances in which they come.
“We will treat everyone living or residing in our country with dignity,” Trump said. “We will be fair, just and compassionate to all. But our greatest compassion must be for American citizens.”

The speech was condemned by some commentators, but even some of Trump’s critics admitted the billionaire had a good day, particularly given the Mexican president effectively vindicated Trump’s call to stop the flow of drugs, guns, cash and people over the porous southern border.

It’s hard to overstate the size of the illegal immigration issue in the United States. The 11 million illegal immigrants make up around 3.45 per cent of the total population. That would be the equivalent of having nearly 830,000 illegal immigrants in Australia.

Part of the reason for Trump’s success has been his willingness to talk about an issue that directly impacts the lives of millions.

“While there are many illegal immigrants in our country who are good people, this doesn’t change the fact that most illegal immigrants are lower-skilled workers with less education who compete directly against vulnerable American workers, and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they will ever pay in,” Trump said.

“But these facts are never reported. Instead, the media and my opponent discuss one thing, and only this one thing: the needs of people living here illegally.

“There is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the wellbeing of the American people. Nothing even comes a close second.”

It requires some serious mental gymnastics — or a deep sense of self-loathing — to argue that it is somehow controversial for an American presidential nominee to put the wellbeing of the American people ahead of citizens of another country who have broken American laws.

But as Trump said, the “out-of-touch media elites” in the US “think the biggest problem facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don’t have legal status”.

Just look at the absurd attempts by some sections of the media to replace the word “illegal” with “undocumented”.

A big part of Trump’s speech was devoted to the people whose lives have been impacted by America’s immigration system. So-called “Angel Moms”, mothers of children who were killed by illegal immigrants, joined him on stage to say the names of the victims.

There were two particularly staggering statistics Trump cited. One was from a 2011 Government Accountability Office report, which found that illegal immigrants in America’s prisons and jails had around 25,000 homicide arrests to their names.

The second was that, according to federal government data, there are “at least” two million criminal illegal aliens currently inside the country, 300,000 of whom had been released back into the community since 2013 alone.

That is, they were encountered or identified by immigration authorities but not detained and processed for deportation. Trump has promised a zero-tolerance deportation policy “from day one” for criminal aliens, and an end to so-called “catch and release”.

“Hillary Clinton talks constantly about her fears that families will be separated,” Trump said. “But she’s not talking about the American families who have been permanently separated from their loved ones because of a preventable death. No, she’s only talking about families who came here in violation of the law.”

Conservative media commentator and former Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root, writing in Fox News, described Trump’s speech as like watching a president being born. “As a conservative, I’ve waited a lifetime for this speech,” he wrote.

“Why? Because it was a speech that didn’t back down by even one inch. It was a speech aimed at Americans, for Americans, delivered by a proud American, who values American exceptionalism.”

frank.chung@news.com.au