Trump would block Mexicans’ payments home to fund wall

President Barack Obama accused Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz of damaging foreign relations with "wackier suggestions" and "half-baked notions" proposed during their campaigns.

Mr Obama was responding to Mr Trump's plan to pay for a wall along the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out by blocking payments made by Mexican migrants to their families at home.

The businessman, in a two-page memo provided to the Washington Post, has proposed using anti-terror surveillance law to cut off a portion of funds sent to Mexico through money transfers, unless Mexico made a “one-time payment of $5-10 billion” to pay for his planned wall.

“I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made,” said Mr Obama when asked at a press conference about the billionaire’s radical proposal.

Mr Trump, who launched his presidential campaign last year attacking Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, rapists and criminals, has claimed that he could build his 1,000-mile border wall at a cost of $8 billion (€7 billion).

The Mexican central bank estimates that almost $25 billion was sent home by Mexicans living overseas in 2015, though the US government has said it is difficult to monitor amounts sent by undocumented migrants.

The billionaire property and entertainment mogul claimed in his memo, which elaborated on plans he first unveiled in August, that “the majority of that amount [$25 billion] comes from illegal aliens”.

He plans to use the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law to compel money transfer firms to verify a customer’s identity and immigration legal status before permitting them to wire money to family members.

“We have the moral high ground here, and all the leverage. It is time we use it in order to ‘Make America Great Again,” said Mr Trump’s memo, published as primary voters in Wisconsin went to the polls in a race in which the businessman has a commanding lead over Mr Cruz.

‘Immigration’

Addressing the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the two candidates in the Republican race that has struck a chord with many primary voters, Mr Obama said he was “also hearing concerns” about Mr Cruz’s plans which he called “just as draconian when it comes to immigration”.

Among the proposals suggested by the Texas senator was to track down and round up all the undocumented Irish and other illegal immigrants and deport them to their home countries.

The first-time senator, who is trailing the businessman in the Republican race, made the proposal when asked last month by Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly about his plans as president for a hypothetical undocumented Irish immigrant “Tommy O’Malley from Co Cork”.

Mr Obama said that the implications of Mr Trump’s plan to cut off remittance payments were “enormous” and called the plan “impractical”.

Most of the remittances was money being sent back by legal immigrants, he said.

"The notion that we are going to track every Western Union bit of money that is being sent to Mexico: good luck with that," he said.

Blocking remittances could damage Mexico’s economy, sending more immigrants across the border if they can’t find jobs, he said.

“This is just one more example of something that is not thought through and is primarily put forward for political consumption,” said Mr Obama, expressing frustration at being asked again about Mr Trump.

The American people expect the president and elected officials to suggest policies that “have been examined, analysed, are effective, where unintended consequences are taken into account”.

"They don't expect half-baked notions coming out of the White House. We can't afford that," he said.

US secretary of state John Kerry called the US presidential race “embarrassing” and said that he is regularly asked about the election while abroad on government business.

"Every meeting I have, everywhere, people are asking what is happening with the United States, 'What are you doing to yourselves?'" the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview with MSNBC.