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US: Trump ramps up anti-migrant rhetoric

by Our Foreign Desk

REPUBLICAN presidential candidate Donald Trump outdid himself in anti-Mexican rhetoric on Sunday evening, telling the NBC Meet the Press programme that the children of undocumented migrants should be deported.

Mr Trump has already insisted on the need to build a high wall along the US-Mexico border — paid for by Mexico.

He would also rescind Obama administration executive orders on immigration and toughen deportation, allowing in only “the good ones.”

The brash billionaire told Meet The Press that he would push to end the constitutionally protected citizenship rights of children of any family living in the US illegally.

“They have to go. What they’re doing, they’re having a baby. And then all of a sudden, nobody knows … the baby’s here,” he blustered.

The US-born children of immigrants — even those living illegally in the country — have been automatically considered US citizens since adoption of the 14th amendment to the constitution in 1868.

The chances of the clause being repealed are slender, requiring the votes of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and support from three-quarters of state legislatures.

Republicans in Congress have pushed without success to repeal the provision since 2011.

“They’re illegal. You either have a country or not,” said the shoot-from-the-lip property speculator.

Mr Trump has made immigration the focal point of his campaign since announcing his candidacy in June, when he described some Mexican immigrants in the US illegally as “rapists” and “criminals.”

His rabid rhetoric on immigration has appealed to a segment of his party’s base and pushed him to the fore in the crowded Republican presidential field.

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