Professor Jennifer Gordon was quoted in Penzanews where she discusses Donald Trump’s proposed immigration policies and border control strategies.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Gordon, Professor at Fordham Law School in New York and an expert on immigration policy, reminded that during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a series of promises about what his immigration policies would be.
“The most prominent included building a wall between the US and Mexico, for which he would make Mexico pay; creating a ‘deportation force’ and removing all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States; and forbidding Muslims to immigrate to the United States,” the analyst said.
However, now we know little about what Trump will actually do, she added.
“He still insists he will build the wall, but the estimated cost would be approximately 25 billion dollars, and Congress is unlikely to approve that money. For its part, Mexico is a sovereign nation and is under no obligation to fund Trump’s projects. The leading Republican in the House of Representatives has rejected the idea of a ‘deportation force,’ which would cost many billions of dollars. Trump says that he will focus first on deporting what he claims are 2–3 million ‘illegal criminal aliens.’ In fact the number of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes is probably closer to 800,000. It is unclear how he would fund even that number of deportations in a short period of time,” Jennifer Gordon said.
According to her, Donald Trump now says that he would not bar Muslim immigration but would subject would-be immigrants from countries with ‘high levels of radical Islamic extremism’ to ‘extreme vetting.’
Once Donald Trump appoints his cabinet, we will have a better sense of how he is likely to proceed, the expert believes.
“A number of the people who Trump is considering for key positions, such as Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security, have supported very anti-immigrant policies in the past,” she said and added that there is tremendous anxiety in immigrant communities at the moment.
