The Pew Hispanic Center says that Trump’s immigration policy proposals might keep the number of immigrants stable at today’s 45 million instead of letting the number of immigrants grow to 78 million, as would happen under today’s policies and trends.

From The Atlantic:

The 30 Million Immigrants Trump Would Turn Away The candidate’s plan to constrict legal immigration would sharply reduce the flow of immigration over the next half century. RONALD BROWNSTEIN 4:50 AM ET POLITICS … Though largely overshadowed by his hard-edged proposals on undocumented immigrants, Trump proposed the most significant restriction on legal immigration since Congress slashed it after World War I. Projections by the non-partisan Pew Research Center suggest that, compared to current law, Trump’s plan would reduce legal immigration through 2065 by tens of millions. “The actual number of people who might not come to the United States would be at least 30 million, possibly more,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew’s director of Hispanic research. Such a reduction, or anything like it, would have huge implications for population and workforce growth; the solvency of Social Security and Medicare; and the Republican Party’s future. Many Republican strategists fear that Trump’s fulminations against undocumented immigrants could alienate Hispanics from the party as lastingly as Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act did African Americans. A parallel campaign to squeeze legal immigration could also repel Asian Americans, who Pew projects will be the largest group of lawful migrants in coming years.

In contrast, John McCain sponsored with Ted Kennedy the 2007 amnesty bill, and thus was rewarded with an appreciative 31% share of the Hispanic vote in 2008, much like George H.W. Bush got 30% of the Hispanic vote in 1988, two years after his boss signed an amnesty bill.

The rest of the article’s considerations for the GOP is about how they would be harmed by cutting back 30 million or more immigrants because the act of objecting to immigration would inspire Righteous Racial Rage in the co-ethnics already in the country of those not allowed into America.

But let’s do some stylized arithmetic.

A. Say the GOP keeps its current racist, viciously anti-immigrant policies and the 30 million new immigrants vote only 25% for the GOP (7.5 million votes) and 75% for Democrats (22.5 million votes). Then the GOP is down 15 million votes for letting in 30 million immigrants.

B. But what if the GOP takes George W. Bush’s path and welcomes in vast numbers of immigrants and gives them lots of dodgy subprime loans and gets the GOP share to 40% (12 million votes to the Democrats 18 million)? Then the GOP is only down 6 million net votes! Except, of course, to be that welcoming to immigrants, according to the conventional wisdom, the GOP probably have to double the intake. With the GOP taking in the lead to welcome 60 million immigrants and getting 40% of them, then they’d lose a net of 12 million votes.

C. Then there is the wild-eyed extremist view promoted by Trump and few nuts: the GOP should reduce immigration by a net of 30+ million.

But that would be political suicide! All Democratic strategists are agreed that it would be inconceivable for anybody in the GOP to conceive of such a nutty strategy.

The key to Trump’s new proposal was his call for a commission to develop policies that would, as their first identified goal, “keep immigration levels, measured by population share, within historical norms.” Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to requests to clarify how he defined “historical norms.” But Lopez calculates that the foreign-born have comprised on average 10 percent of the U.S. population since 1850. Today, immigrants represent around 14 percent of the population, well above that average. As Trump correctly noted, the share of the population born abroad is on track “within just a few years” to exceed its all-time high of 14.8 percent in 1890, at the Melting Pot Era’s height. Pew projects that under current law the foreign-born population share will pass that milestone in about a decade—and reach 18 percent by 2065. Even limiting the foreign-born population share to around 10 percent would still allow considerable numbers of new immigrants to enter over time, both because earlier generations will pass away and the total U.S. population will increase, Lopez notes. But, he quickly adds, not nearly as many would arrive as under current law. As a result, after subtracting deaths and departures, the current U.S. immigrant population of about 45 million would remain unchanged or even shrink in coming decades under Trump’s limits. By contrast, under current trends Pew projects that immigrant population to grow by fully 33 million through 2065. And because future immigrants and their children are projected to provide nearly 90 percent of the total U.S. population growth over that period, “you would be talking about a country that would grow more slowly,” Lopez adds. Over time, that would mean fewer new consumers, homebuyers, and workers.

Toilet paper sales would not increase nearly as much, and that’s what really matters. Plus, if we ever get involved in trench warfare in Eurasia, we’d have more cannon fodder.