Trump is the Anti-Reagan on Immigration

One of the more baseless claims (and that is saying a lot!) that Donald Trump and his acolytes regularly make is that The Donald is a sort of second coming of Ronald Reagan.  Beyond the fact that Reagan had a nose, and Trump has a nose, its hard to see significant similitude.   Consider the two men's almost polar-opposite attitudes on immigration and borders.  One of  Donald Trump's only substantive assertions during this primary campaign has been that he will literally build a high wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and that, by some unspecified legerdemain,  he will make the Mexicans pay for it.  Contrast that with Ronald Reagan's clear disavowal of that very idea in his 1980 primary campaign, a stance consistent with the announcement of his campaign for president the year before, in which he mused at some length of his dream of strengthened political and economic ties between the U.S. and Canada, saying that it was time to "quit thinking about our nearest neighbors as 'foreigners,'" and asserting that "we dare to dream that at some future date a map of the world might show the North American continuent as one in which the peoples and commerce of its three strong countries flow more freely across their present borders than they do today."
--K. Beutler