Trump Should Say Immigration is About Americans & Mexicans versus Carlos Slim

The best way for Trump to gain Latino votes, and to alter the impression that people have of him that he is mean to immigrants is for him to reframe the issue so that he will pursue policies that will help the illegal aliens to do better in their home countries.

He can reframe the issue as working class Americans and Mexicans versus rich plutocrats on both sides of the border who use immigration policy for exploitation. Carlos Slim is the obvious biggest target by far. Essentially, Trump can say that in addition to protecting our border, he will push for anti-monopoly reforms in Mexico to end the economy-sapping telecom gouging by Carlos Slim, and to increase penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegals.

By far, the most important element is the first - he ought to declare that in any renegotiation of NAFTA, he will insist that Mexico pass certain reforms. In general, trade deals will be used as a bargaining chip with any country sending us large numbers of immigrants. The primary focus of the speech should be on he fact that he is not looking to help U.S. workers by hurting non-U.S. workers, but to help them by stopping the massive profiteering of corrupt plutocrats. His reforms would make both average Americans and average Mexicans richer - it's the corrupt plutocrats who would lose out.

Also, it would make it easier to talk about being humane to illegal aliens - he could simply say something like "by the time my policies are done, life will be so good in their home countries they will beg to be deported!" The key is to make it seem that America First will benefit everyone else as well, so it will be harder to portray as selfish.

As a bonus, he could continually lambaste the New York Times as nothing more than a puppet of Carlos Slim, and every bad article about him he could respond with "of course, the N.Y. Times hates me, it's owned by a bad guy I am trying to stop from exploiting his people." Also, he should start calling it the Carlos Slim Times.

That is all.