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Trump's Evolving Immigration Plan is No 'Flip-Flop'

Ruben Navarrett Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- Did Donald Trump really just do a total flip-flop on immigration? No, I don't believe he did.

I think the elite media in New York and Washington are once again showing that they don't understand the immigration issue well enough to report on it honestly, clearly and comprehensively. This is a topic full of complexity and nuance, and the media aren't capable of grasping either.

We see the media's ignorance about immigration on display when networks send reporters to the U.S.-Mexico border to film illegal immigrants when a trip to the neighborhood big-box store in New Jersey or Maryland would suffice, when TV commentators suggest that Americans can deport our way to a solution without thinking about the possibility that those who we deport will come back, and when cable news anchors debate how to punish those who are in the country illegally but turn a blind eye to those U.S. citizens who break the law by hiring them.

Now Trump has reportedly told members of his national Hispanic advisory council that he regretted some of his more hurtful comments about Hispanics and that, if elected, he wants to find a "humane and efficient" manner to deal with immigrants who are in the country illegally.

According to BuzzFeed, which spoke to people at the meeting, Trump stressed that any such accommodation would have to take place in the context of increased border security and his much ballyhooed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. And he still plans to carry out some deportations.

But the real estate developer did seem open to hearing ideas about how to deal with what he acknowledged was the toughest part of the debate -- what to do with those who are in this country without the proper documents.

 

And in some cases, Trump seemed to admit, the proper remedy might include a pathway to earned legal status. According to Univision, at least one participant heard Trump say that mass deportations aren't the answer and that a better idea might be to allow the undocumented to sort out their legal status on U.S. soil through "embassies or consulates of their countries."

Those who characterize this as a flip-flop point to earlier comments such as what Trump said during an interview last August on NBC's "Meet the Press." The businessman told host Chuck Todd that the undocumented "have to go." In other interviews, he talked about creating a "deportation force."

On Sunday, when CNN's Dana Bash asked Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, if the nominee's immigration plan still included a deportation force that would remove illegal immigrants, Conway replied: "To be determined."

The undocumented population in the United States is estimated at about 11 million people. Many conservatives think these people should all be sent home, while many liberals think they should all be allowed to stay.

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Copyright 2016 Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

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