Don’t read this column if you think that concern over immigration is confined to haters and racists. On the other hand, if you are devoted to Donald Trump as the principled leader America needs, go click somewhere else — here’s a fun stockpile of 199 of the Trumpiest Trump quotes ever.

This weekend Donald Trump came out with his plan for changing America’s immigration policies. It is already being hysterically denounced by those who support the status quo. Trump’s harsh language and gratuitous Mexico-bashing play into that reaction. Multiple media are claiming that Trump favors “mass deportation” of illegal immigrants, when in fact his plan calls for no such thing. What Trump wants is much more modest: That illegal aliens who wish to apply for legal status must leave the country first, even if they have children born on U.S. soil. They should not be separated from those children, but should bring them home with them, and get at the back of the line of applicants for legal U.S. status. You might not agree with that policy, but it hardly amounts to “mass deportation.”

The policy goals that Trump lays out are close to those pursued by President Ronald Reagan, and advocated by a bipartisan commission headed by African-American Democrat Rep. Barbara Jordan. Most points in the Trump plan would have been seen as mainstream, realistic public policy by members of both political parties back in, say, 1982. The shrieks of alarm with which Trump’s plan is being greeted tell us little about the plan itself — but a great deal about how elites have hijacked the narrative on this issue, and narrowed the spectrum of “legitimate” debate.

We all must honestly face certain challenging facts.

• Mass, low-skill immigration of almost 2 million people a year into America is a major social, economic, and political issue. It is not some “act of God” like hurricanes or sunspots. It is an act of man, the outcome of political decisions with political and economic consequences. Americans of good will have every right to disagree about it, without having their motives peremptorily challenged. It is unfair and uncharitable to demonize those who wish to change this number in either direction as either “traitors” or “nativists.” We are citizens, who disagree about the optimum number of low-skill immigrants for America’s national interest.
• Yet one side of this debate, which thinks that the optimum number is less than 2 million annually, is consistently demonized, its supporters accused of the lowest and cruelest motives, and their arguments summarily dismissed. This movement is routinely tarred with the most outrageous statements of its most marginal members. In other words, it is stigmatized as the pro-life movement is.
• The other side, which wishes to continue or increase that annual influx of 2 million, is supported by multi-billion dollar charitable foundations, the elites of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the leadership of major churches, and commentators throughout mainstream media. This movement’s motives are rarely questioned, and the radical statements made by its most extreme members go mostly unreported. It gets the rosy, pro-choice treatment that Planned Parenthood has long enjoyed.
• The economic consequences of mass, low-skill immigration in the short run are arguably hardest on the poorest Americans — those with fewer skills themselves, who compete for jobs with a constant influx of competition, many of whom are willing to work for illegally low wages in dangerous conditions that recall 19^th century sweatshops. Trump’s plan obliquely addresses this fact, raising the impact of immigration on unemployment — although other candidates such as Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, and Rick Santorum have been much more explicit in calling for a reduction in low-skill legal immigration.
• Our constitutional system of ordered liberty, limited government, and free enterprise is an unmatched means of allowing the poor to better their station. (My mother grew up malnourished in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, and didn’t finish high school. She lived to attend my graduation from Yale.) But that system only works when most citizens are informed about it and committed to it. It’s not possible to assimilate and acculturate two million people a year, instilling in them the values of self-reliance and small government, when they are constantly tempted by a massive welfare state that wants to make them its passive clients.
• The political consequences of mass, low-skill immigration (legal or illegal) skew massively to the benefit of the Left, for a variety of reasons — ranging from multiculturalist ideology to the simple fact that low-skill, low-income migrants are likely to see generous government transfer programs as in their economic interests. Regardless of their religious faith, recent immigrants of almost any ethnic group, apart from refugees from Communist countries, tend to vote for left-wing Democrats. So do their children. We don’t know about their grandchildren yet, though the example of Boston’s Irish is hardly encouraging. Almost 100 years after their ancestors arrived, that ethnic bloc still votes and acts like an aggrieved, oppressed minority in the city and state that they’ve long controlled.

Conservatives worried about other crucial issues, from the protection of unborn life to national defense, from religious liberty to our country’s seething entitlements crisis, need to face the facts I cited four years ago in a column titled bluntly “Amnesty Equals Abortion.” If we wish to win any national elections ever again, we must do one of two things:

A) Continue admitting many millions of impoverished immigrants, but try to outbid the Democrats in the benefits that we offer them. Failing that, we must hope (against all evidence) that these immigrants will stop voting their perceived economic interests, and start voting on social issues. The fact that millions of African-Americans and Latinos who might describe themselves as pro-life nevertheless voted for the radically pro-choice, pro-partial birth abortion, Barack Obama suggests that except among the most devout churchgoers, social issues can fall by the wayside in elections. Why should we think that immigrants will prove immune to this phenomenon?

B) Reduce the number of low-skill, low-income immigrants (legal or illegal), since they are natural Democrats, while reaching out to native-born, non-white Americans on issues where their values coincide with conservative causes — as Rand Paul, to his credit, has done.

We Can’t Pretend That All Trump’s Supporters Are Secret Klansmen

Since Trump is not merely a crank, but a well-funded candidate who currently leads in Republican polls, it simply won’t do to dismiss him and his supporters as a pathological phenomenon. The fact that millions of hard-working, fair-minded Americans seem to favor him should tell us something: That the debate over immigration has been unfairly shut down by self-interested and partisan elites, in much the same way that the abortion debate for too long regarded as “settled,” with pro-lifers relegated to the fringes of public life.

Donald Trump has many weak points, enough to be a deal-killer. He is a reckless and untrustworthy courier who happens to carry — on this issue — a popular message that resonates with many millions of Americans. Better men with more consistent records, whose pro-life convictions are clear, are in the race. But if they are smart, they will take the plan that Trump has issued and plunder its best ideas. They will try to forge a consensus among Republicans, to hammer home the best elements of Trump’s immigration plan as planks in the GOP platform. If that happens, it will give Trump an exit strategy, allowing him to “declare victory” and drop out of the race — instead of preparing for a third-party run, where he would repeat Ross Perot’s feat in 1992, electing the Democrat. The GOP should take the immigration issue away from Donald Trump. Apart from bluster and ego, he offers little else.