Donald Trump Calls for Amnesty at CPAC - Throws all Hispanics in One Bucket

Construction mogul Donald Trump stood before CPAC last week and called for a de facto amnesty for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. Trump said Republicans should block immigration reform because 100% of any new citizens created by immigration reform would be Democrats.

This is more of the typical block-everything, solve-nothing immigration policy that has left Republicans on the short side of the vote in the past two presidential elections. We have followed this path for many years now and we are no closer to solving our nation's broken immigration system now than we were then.

The result of this shortsightedness in Republican policy has been to grant de facto amnesty to somewhere between 11 and 40 million people (depending on whose plucked-from-air numbers you want to believe) who are free to roam about our country with no identification, no background checks and no means of legally paying federal employment taxes. And we say we are the "nation of laws" party?

Immigration reform and dealing with those already in this country illegally is a national security problem and an economic problem. Remember, not all of the undocumented people in this country are illegal border crossers. Up to 40% of this number represents people who have overstayed their visas (like the terrorists of 9-11). Our broken system does not have an effective method of following up with visa overstays.

Trump seems to think that ALL HISPANICS vote the same way. That they are some monolithic group where everyone thinks and votes the same way. That is simply not true. Hispanics are as varied in their opinions as any other voting demographic.  

"You can do whatever you want to do, but everyone of those 11 million people will be voting Democratic,” Trump said. “It is just the way it works.” For Trump to say that all 11 million illegals would become Democrat voters is simply a lie and a scare tactic. Why would he say that?

One possible answer to that... Economics! Remember, Trump makes his millions off the backs of construction workers through his real estate empire. One of the side effects of reforming our immigration system would be to create millions of new legal workers. Many of whom are already working for the construction industry illegally. They are hired by unethical construction companies who improperly classify them as independent contractors when they are really employees. Employee misclassification allows these companies to utilize cheap labor by avoiding having to deduct and match employment taxes so they can abuse employees by not paying over-time and workman's compensation. These are the kinds of companies that are truly looking for cheap labor from the illegal alien market pool. They keep these workers living in the shadow of the fear of deportation and work them illegally.

See ConstructionCitizen.com for more information about contruction employment ethical practices.

An immigration reform and a guest worker program that would allow guest-workers to only work for companies that deduct and match taxes would fix this problem. But woud that create problems for Trump and his construction companies and their sub-contractors? Is this why he is so opposed to fixing our broken system of illegal immigration? Is this why he opposes a guest-worker program?

Kicking the can down the road solves nothing. Our nation is at risk because of unidentified people. Companies continue to abuse workers and avoid taxes our country needs to reduce deficit spending. And people are forced into situations where American citizens are deported while criminals are allowed to walk the streets in anonymity.

Trump said something else very interesting at CPAC. Something that makes him sound very much like a Democrat. He told his audience that we (the United States) should "take" $1.5 trillion worth of oil from Iraq to pay for the cost of the war. And then we should "give" $1 million to each family who lost someone in that war. Really Donald? Just go take it? Perhaps that is something we should have set up when we created the new government in Iraq, but we didn't. Just taking that now would be theft. Sounds like a Democrat "take from those who have and give to those who have not" philosophy to me.

If Republicans want to win elections in the future, they must show they can lead and govern. We can no longer be the party that just says no. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is leading us in the right direction on this issue. Other Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) should follow his lead on immigration reform. Together, these two promising young senators could change our nation for the better and lead our party out of the darkness into which we have fallen. The Donald should just go find another building to build and let us get on with our business.