Immigration flip-flop
Not any more they don’t. After Trump’s immigration speech in Phoenix Wednesday those leaders say they feel betrayed. They say that in a conference call with a group of them, Trump, who formed the committee of Hispanic advisers last month, said he was ready to give immigrants who did not enter the country legally, but committed no crime since, a path to citizenship.
Trump surprised them by flip-flopping on his flip-flop. His speech was hard-line: immigrants who’ve committed crimes will be sent home — essentially the policy of Barack Obama’s administration — and immigrants who’ve committed no crimes beyond entering illegally will not be given amnesty of any kind.
Those immigrants, the oft-called ‘quiet immigrants’, must leave the U.S., Trump said; once out of the country they can apply to return but there’s no guarantee they’ll be allowed back.
“People will know that you can’t just smuggle in, hunker down and wait to be legalized,” he told a partisan crowd Wednesday night. “Those days are over.”
Trump betrays Hispanic leaders
That was not what Tony Suarez, executive vice-president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, was expecting from Trump. He said that in that conference call with the advisory council on Monday, Trump replied “yes” when he asked if they could expect a softer stance in the speech. It was also what Trump said in a town hall meeting hosted by Sean Hannity a week before.
Suarez told the Toronto Star that Trump indicated that there was hope for those who had committed no crimes, hope they could stay, that compassion would be shown.
“The impression given on the call was not what we heard last night,” he said. “There’s several of us who have gone out on a limb, if you will, to try to at least be at the table of reason with him, and that’s left us confused and disappointed.”
Others were stronger yet in their condemnation of Trump’s speech, including Texas lawyer Jacob Monty, a member of the National Hispanic Advisory Council, a group that tried to work with Trump on the issue of the (estimates say) 11 million who entered the country illegally. On a Facebook post Monty said he will work with Trump no more.
“I gave Donald TRUMP a Plan that would improve border security, remove hardened criminal aliens and most importantly give work authority to the millions of honest, hardworking immigrants in the US,” he wrote. “He rejected that tonight and so I must reject him.”
Monty said Trump told him he was seeking a “compassionate immigration plan” but accused the billionaire of being a populist and not a Republican and said the speech and his immigration stance destroyed Trump’s chance of winning.
He said Trump “…must want to lose.”
Another important leader in America’s Hispanic community is Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principals Group. Aguilar withdrew his support of Trump after the speech, saying Trump’s speech was “not realistic and not compassionate.”
“For the last two months he said he was not going to deport people without criminal records,” a bitter Aguilar told CNN. “He actually said that he was going to treat undocumented immigrants without criminal records in a humane and compassionate way.”
Even before Wednesday’s speech Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton in support among Hispanics badly, by as many as 48 percentage points. Hispanics make up 12 percent of those eligible to vote in America and will play a key role in who next occupies the White House.
