Donald Trump has ruled out any amnesty for illegal immigrants if he is elected US president, saying that their only route to legal status will be to return home and apply for re-entry.
In a highly anticipated speech aimed at cleaning up his recent muddied stance on immigration, the US Republican presidential candidate reverted to his hardline policies and blustering rhetoric of the early stages of his candidacy in an apparent bid to solidify his base of white voters.
Laying out a 10-point immigration plan, Mr Trump removed any ambiguity about whether he might soften his proposed approach toward the estimated 11 million “undocumented” immigrants, including thousands of Irish living illegally in the US, and a path to legalisation.
"For those here today illegally who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only: to return home and apply for re-entry," Mr Trump said at a rally in Arizona.
In line with his nationalistic policies, he said these repatriated migrants would have to apply to return under the rules of a new immigration system that would select immigrants “based on their likelihood of success in US society and their ability to be financially self-sufficient.”
New immigrants would be chosen based on “merit, skill and proficiency,” he said.
The Republican candidate had vacillated over the past week on whether he might offer illegal immigrants an opportunity to seek legal status. Mr Trump left no one listening to his fiery speech last night unsure of the exact position he was taking towards these American residents.
Speaking from prepared remarks on a teleprompter, Mr Trump stuck to his previously stated plan to deport any immigrants living illegally in the US. He promised to create a “special deportation force” to remove criminal immigrants and to end over-stays on temporary visas.
"Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws," he said.
Vitriolic language
The speech wiped out any doubts about whether the businessman might pivot to a broader audience over the remaining 68 days of the election campaign to win over important Hispanic voters and other minorities and close the gap in the polls on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
It is also unlikely to appeal to suburban white voters and moderate Republicans who, based on his poll numbers, have been turned off by his divisive policies and vitriolic language.
The “core issue” in the debate was not the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States but the “well-being of the American people,” Mr Trump said during his address, at one point inviting the relatives of victims killed by illegal immigrants to speak at the rally.
“We will break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration. We will break the cycle. There will be no amnesty. Our message to the world will be this: you cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country,” Mr Trump pledged.
Mr Trump said that he would introduce new screening tests for immigrants applying to live in the US to ensure that the country “will get the right people.”
He pledged to create “an ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people.”
Hours after meeting Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Mr Trump reiterated his plan to build a wall at the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out of the US.
“We will build a great wall along the southern border,” he said to cheers. “And Mexico will pay for the wall - 100 per cent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.”
Shortly after their joint press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday, Mr Peña Nieto contradicted Mr Trump's assertion to reporters that they had not discussed the businessman's plan to make the Mexican government pay for the wall during their meeting.
“At the beginning of the conversation I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” the Mexican leader tweeted.
In response to these conflicting accounts, the Trump campaign said their meeting was the first part of the discussion and “a relationship builder” between them.
“It was not a negotiation, and that would have been inappropriate,” said Mr Trump’s senior communications adviser Jason Miller. “It is unsurprising that they hold two different views.”
Mrs Clinton seized on the contradictory versions of the meeting - Mr Trump’s first with a head of state since he became the Republican presidential nominee - mocking her opponent over his diplomatic shortcomings exposed by the encounter.
“Trump just failed his first foreign test,” the former US secretary of state tweeted. “Diplomacy isn’t as easy as it looks.”
Her campaign chairman John Podesta said in a statement in response to Mr Peña Nieto's tweet: "It turns out Trump didn't just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it."
