It was just reported that President Trump may have softened his stance on deportations, particularly as it relates to farm workers and hotel workers. In a Truth Social post seen on X, Trump wrote:
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.
President Trump — no!
I’m sympathetic to the plight of some employers in some industries, but I am also intimately familiar with Ronald Reagan’s bargain, as it related to granting amnesty to the 3 million illegal aliens who were in America in the 1980s. As Ed Meese recounts, Ronald Reagan considered his Amnesty Bill (the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) his administration’s greatest mistake.
I’ve proposed before, and I will here again: I believe that there is a middle ground that can be staked out. First off, amnesty of illegal invaders is off the table, but many industries in our economy are heavily dependent on the workers whom President Trump alluded to in his post. Although the American people are wholly onboard with rounding up and deporting “criminal” illegal aliens, many would like to see some accommodation made for those who, though they came here illegally, are hardworking, have stayed out of trouble, and provide the country a net economic benefit.
Here’s the proposal: a new non-citizen legal status. Create a legal carve-out for (some of) those who have come here illegally, or overstayed their visas, if they register, are vetted, and are immediately processed for legal non-citizen status.
Non-citizen legal status would grant said immigrants the ability to work in America, but they would not be able to vote or receive federal aid or matching funds for social safety net programs. If a state wants to cover their education, housing, and health care (Medicaid) costs, that should be the prerogative of the individual state (and its taxpayers). Federal funds should not be provided to pay for these state-provided services. Voter ID would need to be adopted nationally as part of this accommodation in order to ensure that only citizens are voting in state and federal elections.
Citizenship would never be offered for this classification of people; however, as the Trump administration has laid out, any illegal alien currently residing in America can register, self-deport, and be considered for citizenship at a later date.
Any illegal alien not registered in this program would be immediately arrested, detained, and deported. Funding and enforcement would need to be ramped up (at the front end) to effect these deportations and to prohibit future invasion.
This proposal would immediately disabuse the premise that Democrats care for these people beyond their vote.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.