Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his aggressive plan to combat unauthorized immigration, which calls for — among other things — the revocation of citizenship from people born in the U.S. whose mothers arrived in the nation without documentation.
Appearing on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” on Tuesday night, the billionaire businessman — who owns three New Jersey golf courses — talked about his proposal to dispatch so-called “anchor babies” to an incredulous Bill O’Reilly.
“You are not going to be able to deport people who have American citizenship now, and the federal courts will never allow mass deportations without due process for each and every one,” O’Reilly said. “Do you envision federal police kicking in the doors in barrios around the country, dragging families out and putting them on a bus? Do you envision that?”
Trump, unfazed, responded unequivocally.
“Bill, I don’t think they have American citizenship,” he said of those with undocumented mothers. “And if you speak to some very, very good lawyers that I know, some would disagree, but many of them agree with me. You’re going to find that they do not have American citizenship. We have to start a process where we take back our country. Our country is going to hell. We have to start a process where we take back our country.”
According to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, 3.8 million undocumented immigrants have at least one child who is a U.S. citizen.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1868, provides that children born in the U.S. become American citizens regardless of the citizenship of their parents.
O’Reilly asked Trump if he planned to amend the constitution to carry out his plan to deny birthright citizenship to those born to unauthorized immigrants.
Trump responded by saying the process was long and arduous, and that “I’d much rather find out if anchor babies are actually citizens” through the courts.
O’Reilly then suggested that Trump file a federal lawsuit to prove his theory.
“You should test it out. Why don’t you have your guys file a federal suit now? You should do it tomorrow,” O’Reilly suggested.
The real estate tycoon immediately took up the challenge, saying he plans to challenge the amendment in court.
“We are going to test it out,” Trump said. “That’s going to happen, Bill.”
Trump made the appearance two days after releasing a sweeping plan that calls for rescinding President Obama’s immigration orders, deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants, ending birthright citizenship, and building a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump — who leads his 16 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in all recent polls — dismissed critics who have called the plan too extreme and said it may alienate a voting bloc that Republicans are hoping to court: Latinos.
“We have to bring our country back, Bill,” he told host Bill O’Reilly. “We’re in big trouble. We’re losing so much.”
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4 Responses
There is no question that Trump is unelectable. Having said that, he is finding a receptive audience in the seething anger of many independent voters who are fed up with political correctness. The average voter is not biased against any group. After all, we too are children of immigrants and refugees. As Rav Moshe Feinstein always stated, we must have hakaras hatov to this midinah shel chessed. Still, we are faced with threats of terrorism. A porous, unrestricted border, can allow people to enter with evil in their hearts. Aside from that, there is anger at politicians who allowed illegals to take jobs during the recent recession, that could have gone to unemployed Americans. Just wait and see. Trump won’t be elected, but, his ideas will resonate. In order to survive, a less radical but somewhat similar approach may be adopted by other candidates.
They have been saying that for years. It was true in the 17th century (the Americans did lost their country). And it was probably true in the 18th century (the WASPs did los their country – today white Protestants of British ancestry are a minority, though they still dominate the government and the economy).
Yet interestingly enough, even though the ethnicty of the country changes, except for the shift when the European took over, there haven’t been any radical changes. The same anti-immigrant arugments of the late 18th century or made today by the descendants of those who were the targets of earlier nativists. Not that except for Scott Walker, none of the leading Republican candidates are WASP (Huckabee, Graham and Paul are WASP – and while Trump is WASP he is a 20th century immigrant and has been married to non-WASPs).
It’s long overdue that someone addressed this issue. The 14th Amendment was passed to allow blacks to be citizens, not to allow this situation of “anchor babies”. We are losing our country to this invasion of illegals and because the rule of law has been abandoned
If Trump does nothing else he has drawn attention to issues that the Republican establishment prefers not to call attention to
🙀 We may be losing our country to Trump.