How Donald Trump's remittances plan would fail too

Every Donald Trump plan to reduce massive and illegal immigration would fail miserably. See that link for the details on how his Muslims ban won't work and his mass deportation plan won't work. (The Trump Wall will also fail for the same reasons).

Another Trump plan that won't work is his plan to pay for the Trump Wall by threatening to block remittances: the money immigrants and illegal aliens send home. Trump says that he'd block remittances to Mexico unless that country pays for the Trump Wall. Trump's Rube Goldbergian scheme - involving executive orders and redefinitions of what words mean - is at [1].

Remittances from the U.S. are in the dozens of billions of dollars, with around $20 billion sent from the U.S. to Mexico. They aren't pocket change and very powerful entities profit from it in various ways. It serves as a very welcome cash influx for the Mexican government. On the U.S. side, major banks as well as smaller banks and financial companies take a cut. Even the Federal Reserve wants to take a cut via the Directo a Mexico program. See immigration banks for how banks seek to profit from illegal immigration.

Do you think the government of Mexico, big banks, and the Federal Reserve are going to just roll over and let Trump cut into their profits?

Of course not. They're going to do what's needed to keep the money flowing. That will include buying off Congress to pressure Trump not to continue with his plans or to pass laws that would render Trump's plans moot. Almost all Democrats in Congress would already oppose Trump's plans, and enough donations could turn many or most Republicans against them too.

It would probably include the Fed threatening to enact financial policies that would reduce Trump's popularity or threatening not to help him when reelection time comes around.

While Trump is supposedly incorruptible because he's so rich, he's actually extremely vulnerable because of his business. Even when he hands it off to his children to run, he won't want his business to be greatly impacted by his policies. The masters of the financial universe can figure that out and they will probably use it to pressure him not to impact their profits. For instance, major banks might threaten to decrease the credit ratings of Trump's businesses or simply refuse them credit. Trump needs banks to finance his operations, but they don't need him.

At the same time, far-left groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Council of La Raza, MALDEF and so on will do what they've always tended to do when a politician tries to reduce illegal immigration: sue. The ACLU tied up Arizona's SB1070 in court for two years and gutted it. They'd find some legal theory that would let them do the same with Trump's remittances plan. It doesn't hurt that the Mexican government has various direct and indirect links to major far-left NGOs that enable illegal immigration.

At the same time, the establishment media would swing into action, portraying cutting off remittances as a humanitarian crisis. Images of crying children would fill the airwaves and front pages. See the PIIPP and DREAM Act pages for similar propaganda. Their goal would be to turn as many Americans as possible against Trump's plans and to make it politically difficult for Congress to support his plans.

Trump wouldn't have much leverage at all against any of that. Yes, he could call the media names as he's always done. He could threaten to veto bills. But, those powerful entities would get their way because they'd simply have more money and more power. Congress could do what they've always done: placate the segment of their base that supports Trump with meaningless bills, distract them with shiny objects, and make themselves the lesser of two evils at election time.

Note that not only is Trump proposing something that will never happen, but he wants to keep remittances flowing. From [1]:

It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.

As with everything else, Trump is going about it the wrong way. His goal should be to reduce remittances, not keep them as they are. The way to reduce them is to make the arguments on the remittances page. If Trump made an intellectual argument against remittances and really worked at it, he could make them toxic (or at least partly so). That's something he won't do both because he has no real intellectual grounding in opposing illegal immigration and because he has to play to his base. And, so far the only thing the Trump base understands are lunkhead plans that will never work.

---------
[1] donaldjtrump . com/positions/pay-for-the-wall