Elite Republicans tried to ignore them. Now they're shaping Donald Trump's immigration policy

[Zorro]

For decades, immigration hard-liners have felt sidelined and taken for granted by Republican presidential candidates, left with dog whistles and policy crumbs. But Donald Trump’s ascent to the top of the Republican ticket has changed their fortunes.

Longtime advocates for shutting the door to new immigrants now hold crucial positions in Trump’s campaign, and many feel, for the first time in recent memory, they have a candidate who is willing to speak plainly about reducing immigration flows and offers their clearest shot yet at influencing, perhaps even drastically altering, U.S. immigration policy.

Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff and poster child for workplace raids and traffic stops, earned a prized seat on Trump’s airplane a few months ago, spending hours with his new close friend. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the fiercest opponent of GOP-backed “amnesty” bills in Congress for the last decade, now smiles and demurs when asked whether he might serve as Trump’s running mate or settle for a Cabinet position.

And NumbersUSA, long on the fringes of Washington lobbying groups with its stance that legal immigration should be reduced, now crows that all those powerful consultants had it wrong when they insisted that the GOP needed to compromise on raising immigration levels to win a presidential election.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-immigration-players-20160704-snap-story.html

[Hortensis]

1. Trump is bringing some bad people to prominence,

some of whom who are likely to remain long after he's gone. This in spite of the very real possibiliy that the Republican Party's focus on bigotry as its main issue will create the same severe national backlash that it experienced in California in the 1990s.

Stephen Miller, top aide to Trump at 30, sounds like just the sort of highly talented scumbag who can be very useful to those who like to pull national strings from their estates. If they're not too angry at him for helping destroy their hopes... Depending.

From The Guardian

His columns for The Chronicle range in subject from multiculturalism (which he calls “segregation”); to paid family leave (which results in men “getting laid off because [their] boss was losing too much money by paying absent employees”); to the Duke lacrosse scandal (“a large number of people – instead of rejoicing at our peers’ innocence – will insist it is a conspiracy of white privilege”).

The columns offer a revealing glimpse into the opinions and ideology of Trump’s top policy adviser, and the sort of advice the presidential hopeful might be getting. ... On torture, for example, Miller writes that criticism of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques by American soldiers made then-senator Ted Kennedy “a traitor”, and that comparing the actions of the US military with those of its enemies means “you have betrayed your nation and are morally guilty of treason”.

Most of Miller’s writings, however, are concerned with the culture wars, particularly matters of race. In an article titled “Paranoia”, Miller writes that “racial paranoia” – belief in systematic racism – does a “tremendous disservice” not only to those accused of harboring racist beliefs, but to racial minorities as well. “It saps their motivation and has devastating results on their potential for success,” he writes.

(Ah, he's concerned for them...)

Good article. Thanks, Zorro

[pampango]

2. The nativist wing of the GOP has focused on illegal immigration because it attracts more people

to their cause. Their real goal has always been to reduce legal immigration as well. They just did not want to start with that as a public goal because it would not have been as popular.