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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

Republicans are strongly anti-illegal immigration, and that appears anti-immigration to some.

Being strongly anti illegal immigration is among their positions, yes, but I think OP is more referring to their position of erecting additional.barriers in the way of legal immigration.

They have discovered it is easier to win political points by making current legal immigrants illegal and deporting them, than addressing what people think of as "illegal immigration". But they get to call it the same thing :-)

There’s a very interesting question to be answered as to whether more high-quality immigrants come through legal immigration or illegal immigration.

Legal immigration is more likely to bring those you actively desire via quotas. Still illegal immigration has the advantage of raw numbers.

There’s also the question of how many 2nd/3rd generation immigrants go on to become high-quality from each group.

There's absolutely nothing preventing large "raw numbers" of legal skilled immigrants to high-income countries, except policy choices that are overtly hostile towards increasing legal immigration.

Trump supported a plan to reduce legal immigration by half:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/politics/trump-immigra...

As an immigrant in the US I looked at the plans ( produced by Stephen Miller) and would not have qualified to be admitted.

That's an article from 7 years ago?

Don't you think it makes more sense to look at Trump's 2024 platform?

https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/

The only statement on legal immigration: "Republicans will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our Country contribute positively to our Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public Resources."

The amount of room they give to interpret that vague statement however they want could fit an aircraft carrier. Their actual policy position is in their project 2025 materials and it curtails legal immigration pretty significantly along similar lines that trump attempted to tread in his first presidency.

Stop spreading mis-info about Trump and Project 2025 which he is not involved in.

Of course he isn’t involved in it, trump doesn’t come up with any policy. Doesn’t mean it isn’t the position of his party.

In the last ten years or so, I came to understand the parable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in a visceral way. We can all see the viciousness and cruelty to scapegoats is Trump and the conservatives binding principal, and that they’ve settled in immigrants as that scapegoat without much regard to legal status. You can tell me all you want that the evidence of my eyes and ears is false, but I am not able to turn them off.

It seems like Trump’s immigration stance has evolved significantly in the seven years since this article was written. A few weeks ago he appeared on the All-in podcast and promoted the idea of giving green cards en masse to foreign students upon graduation. I support the idea even if I don’t support the candidate.

Meanwhile if we forget what his lips are doing and watch for the fist we’d see his republican party has a different agenda. Namely one about picking certain favorite nations and excluding others. Really just read the project 2025 materials and forget whatever tangents he goes on, as he doesn’t hold himself accountable to what he might say.

So if a text says your name 100 times, you automatically wrote it? He has nothing to do with Project 2025.

"In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch" [0]. Here's details on a bunch of them [1].

People and organizations, not just on the left but also over 100 influential organizations on the right [2], take Project 2025 as the desired direction for a future Trump administration. Trump himself has endorsed many of the same positions in this document.

Right or wrong, that's why people have made the association between Trump and Project 2025. This is what conservatives as a group seem to want for a future Trump administration. There doesn't seem to be a competing vision for the party, and certainly nothing laid out in 900 pages of detail.

Why wouldn't people on the left make the association between Trump and this document when so many on the right do?

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-pro...

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-ex-trump-contributors-...

[2] https://live-project2025.pantheonsite.io/about/advisory-boar...

Yes of course, but as I told someone else, if I said I believe the left is associated with "down with America" you would disagree. Just because 1% of the left might say that, doesn't mean it's true for all of you.

The Democrat obsession with Trump implementing Project 2025 strikes me as similar to the Republican obsession with Biden implementing the Green New Deal a few years ago. It's the president's radical legislation that isn't endorsed by the president and isn't legislation.

It's a mistake to make the good-faith assumption that Republicans have logically consistent views.

To Republicans, Cubans don't count as illegal immigrants because they're escaping "communism," and their immigrants consistently vote red. Plus, the majority of Cubans are white and Christian, unlike the brown immigrants that Republicans don't want in the country.

The grassroots of the Republican Party absolutely want a reduction in all immigration. Few actually in Congress though. I'm talking about voters.

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