Donald Trump has taken a major risk in this campaign by shifting his position on immigration, away from mass deportation toward some kind of path to legal residency — not citizenship — for those among the 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have not committed other serious crimes, including identity theft. Some will depict his policy move as a sign of weakness, or proof that he has been conning conservative voters all along. Many sincerely worried Americans will feel betrayed, while Democrats will seek to portray his move as a sign of desperation in the face of sagging polls.

In fact, what Trump is doing might well be more subtle, if unexpected: He could be moving from a powerful but impractical stance designed to lock up the GOP primaries, and toward a solid, prudent policy position that can solidify a national consensus — which if put into practice would actually solve many of our immigration problems. Provided Trump insists on those prudent policies, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he doesn’t, then he will disgrace himself and be forgotten like Ross Perot. That choice is his.

The Democrats: America Isn’t a Country Anymore. Get Used To It.

The Democrats’ immigration policies are an unmitigated disaster, a full-blown sellout of American sovereignty in service of leftist identity politics, a scheme to force-feed big government in two synergistic ways:

1. Importing more clients for nanny-state socialist programs, many of them with “desperate” needs that only the federal government can supposedly hope to solve, and
2. Shipping in trainloads of future Democrat voters who will be herded by the leaders of their “communities” to back the party of lavish welfare, transgender tyranny and Planned Parenthood.

Combine that with the Democrats’ commitment to endanger our security by flying in unvettable Sunni Muslim ex-refugees — now safely living in Turkey — past half a dozen Muslim countries to settle in America, and you must conclude that the Democrats have zero respect for our sovereignty. They don’t see America as a country at all, but a floundering host that can feed the vast, multiculturalist tapeworm that is its government.

Donald Trump: Caving In or Cutting the Best Deal for America?

I can understand why many conservative voters thrilled to Trump’s tough talk about deporting 11 million illegal aliens. It rang in their patriotic hearts and affirmed the verdict of their heads, which together said: These people never asked our permission to come here and flouted our laws in doing so. We have every right to send them back where they came from.

Each word of that is true, and anyone who tells you differently, who implies that lawbreakers have somehow earned the privilege of U.S. citizenship by evading American laws, is trying to manipulate you.

That doesn’t mean that deporting every illegal alien would be the most prudent policy. And in any case, our country lacks the health and stamina to do so. Too many of our politicians are either terrified or bought. Our elites are as disconnected from America and addicted to globalist slogans as the bureaucrats of the EU. Too many of our churches are drowning in cheap grace and false compassion, hanging rainbow banners over their crosses and cashing fat federal checks for “refugee resettlement.”

If Trump were elected, and tried even to start deporting illegals, our streets would fill with outraged protesters waving flags of many nations, and our campuses would close down as privileged snowflakes threatened to immolate themselves. Every TV screen in America would be flooded with sob stories (some of them real, of citizen children whose illegal parents willfully put their families in this position), and the Republican party would fold like a cheap circus tent.

The threat of mass deportation was always an empty one. But the ethical case for it stands, and in exchange for abandoning the high ground of enforcing our nation’s just and democratically elected laws, we conservatives must demand a proportionate price. That only price high enough to repay this sacrifice of principle is a raft of concrete actions that honor that principle going forward. These are the points Trump must insist on as the price of extending a wholly unmerited mercy to 11 million illegals:

1. Build a wall. Our southern border is out of control, dominated in many places by the soldiers of drug cartels, who traffic in human beings, flood our cities with narcotics, and have forged ties with Muslim terrorists. We must fence off the deadly deserts where immigrants go to die, and cut down the hideous “rape trees” that immigrant smugglers festoon with the tattered clothes of women they have victimized.
2. Make E-Verify mandatory for every employer in America. This simple, effective worker verification system already exists, which could take away every excuse of employers who hire and exploit illegal workers. There is no reason why it is optional except contempt for America’s laws.
3. Track and remove from our country those who overstay temporary visas, like most of the 9/11 hijackers.
4. Reform our outdated system of birthright citizenship, which grants American status to every baby born in America’s airports. This policy is the fruit of a bad Supreme Court decision and could at least be challenged by federal law. It is currently grossly exploited by a wide range of bad actors, from foreign companies that fly pregnant women to give birth in American hospitals, to illegal immigrants who by becoming parents of citizens become non-deportable.
5. Institute some plan like Mr. Trump’s for requiring that immigrants renounce anti-American ideologies, such as sharia — and cut the immigration quotas for nations afflicted by terrorism.
6. Reform our legal immigration system to emphasize skilled workers, not high-school dropouts and relatives of amnestied illegal aliens.

Absent this full range of policies, anything like an amnesty would only invite another influx of people willing to risk a slap on the wrist and a free trip back home, as the price of trying to barge into America uninvited. That’s exactly what happened after Ronald Reagan’s ill-advised amnesty of 1986.

Only with these policies really in place should America offer illegal immigrants who are already here legal status to live and work here. Residency, not citizenship. Too many Americans have quite literally died or slaved for the privilege. It is too sacred for millions of people to steal.