From Byron York, writing at the Washington Examiner:
“Donald Trump: Undocumented Immigrants ‘Have to Go,'” read the headline at NBC News, where Trump appeared on “Meet the Press.” “They have to go,” Trump told moderator Chuck Todd, referring to immigrants in the U.S. illegally. “We either have a country or we don’t have a country.” At the same time, Trump unveiled a brief immigration position paper, created in consultation with Republican senator Jeff Sessions, calling for, among other things, an end to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
Some of Trump’s presidential rivals, and no doubt many in the GOP establishment, were appalled. “Our leading Republican is embracing self-deportation, that all of the 11 million have to walk back where they came from, and maybe we’ll let some of them come back,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CBS. “I just hope we don’t go down that road as a party. So our leading contender, Mr. Trump, is going backward on immigration. And I think he’s going to take all of us with him if we don’t watch it.”
But are Trump’s views on immigration as far out of the mainstream as Graham suggests? Are they out of the mainstream at all? A recent academic paper, by Stanford professor David Broockman and Berkeley Ph.D candidate Douglas Ahler, suggests a majority of the public’s views on immigration are closer to Trump’s than to the advocates of comprehensive immigration reform.