Trump’s latest crazy idea: How to make Mexico pay for the wall

(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast – AP)

After almost a year of keeping us guessing, Republican hopeful Donald Trump has finally revealed how he plans to get Mexico to pay for the wall along the U.S.-Mexican border that he says he would build as president. And his idea couldn’t be more counterproductive.

In a two-page memo to The Washington Post to clarify how he would pay for his proposed 1, 000-mile border fence, Trump said that he would threaten Mexico with cutting part of the estimated $25 billion in remittances that Mexicans living in the United States send their families back home unless Mexico pays for the wall.

If Mexico fails to make “a one-time payment of $5-10 billion” to pay for the border wall, the United States would expand the Patriot Act antiterrorism law to cut off part of U.S.-based Mexicans’ family remittances to their home country, he said. He added, characteristically, “It’s an easy decision for Mexico.”

Manuel Orozco, a migration expert with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, D.C., who has done several studies on family remittances, says Trump’s proposal to cut these flows is “deranged, ” among other things because the U.S. president would have no authority to do such a thing. It would take congressional action, he said.

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