Can Trump Fix Immigration in America?

President Trump’s supporters believe his unconventional approach allows him to make diplomatic breakthroughs others think impossible. It’s time to test that at home on immigration, suggests Reihan Salam in The Atlantic. It’s time to offer an amnesty.

Trump should “offer a new grand bargain of his own: Building on the Secure and Succeed Act, he would call for limits on chain migration and serious workplace enforcement, two of the restrictionist movement’s core objectives, and in exchange he would accept an amnesty for unauthorized migrants who have peacefully resided in the US for a lengthy period of time,” Salam writes.

“To establish his credibility on this front, he could shift enforcement resources from long-stayers to more recent arrivals, with a particular focus on visa overstayers. Doing so would send a clear signal to potential migrants, which in turn would soon yield a steep decline in the unauthorized inflow.”

“[T]he fact remains that most Americans don’t have the stomach to uproot the long-resident unauthorized population, and pretending otherwise makes immigration enforcement less tractable, not more so.”

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