Having illegal immigrants pay a fine and back taxes to stay in the country was the policy proposed in the Gang of Eight amnesty bill! Further, that is the position on amnesty once held by former candidate for the Republican nomination for president Jeb Bush. "I think for the eleven or twelve million people here illegally, they should come out from the shadows, they should pay a fine, they should pay taxes, they should work," Bush said in an interview back in October of 2015. He famously, or infamously, drew fire from conservative critics for referring to illegal immigrants crossing the southern border illegally as an “act of love.” "A great country ought to know where those folks are and politely ask them to leave," he said, adding later that properly targeting people who overstay visas "would restore people's confidence" in the nation's immigration system. "There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law," he added. "But the way I look at this -- and I'm going to say this, and it'll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families -- the dad who loved their children -- was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families."
Now that Trump himself has proposed non-violent illegal aliens be allowed to remain in the United States after paying fines in the form of “back taxes,” is Mr. Trump’s plan substantially different from Mr. Bush’s? Or the Gang of Eight bill's?
