The fact is that net Mexican immigration since the 2007-08 economic collapse has slowed to a trickle. Data compiled by the Pew Research Center, accepted as reasonably accurate by experts on all sides of the immigration debate, indicates that net migration from Mexico to the United States since 2007 has been zero. The numbers of illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has declined from 6.9 million to 5.9 million.
Barely half of the country’s illegals now are from Mexico, and in 2014, for the first time, more non-Mexicans than Mexicans were apprehended on the border. More immigrants now come from China and India than from Mexico.
Two of the Obama administration’s actions regarding immigration have stirred outrage among Republicans: letting younger than-18 Central Americans be dispersed around the country last year; and putting forth a proposal, now blocked by a federal judge, to provide legal status not only to those brought over illegally as children but also to the parents who brought them over illegally. But these actions are not the focus of Trump’s complaints.
Trump has also not focused on proposals that could reduce the illegal population, like requiring employers to use e-Verify or, as Chris Christie reasonably advocated, using FedEx-like tracking methods to identify the nearly half of illegals who have overstayed legal visas. Trump’s focus instead is to stop a surge that is already over – again, yesterday’s news.
Similarly, Trump’s complaints about trade agreements, reminiscent of Perot, ignore the fact that international trade has continued to decline since 2009. Higher Chinese labor costs and the perils of long supply chains have led firms to return manufacturing jobs – onshoring – in the United States.
Declining international trade is of course a mixed blessing, a symptom of stagnant economies here and abroad. But “the giant sucking sound” Perot decried is a thing of the past – more of yesterday’s news.
Trump’s issues, still raging for older voters, don’t seem to resonate with the young. And don’t point to a way toward a Republican appeal to the electorate of the future.
• Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Source Article from http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2015/09/04/barone-trumps-appeal-based-on-yesterdays-new/ahdra13/
