Indiana Governor Mike Pence nomination by Donald Trump

" Indiana Governor Mike Pence's conservative track record on immigration dates to his earliest days in the U.S. House and echoes the hard-line stance of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who chose Pence as his running mate.
During his dozen years in the House, Pence lent his support to numerous bills aimed at overhauling the immigration system, including a limit on the number of visas issued to each country and efforts to allow individual states to stand up border-patrol militias and to define English as the country's official language. And he supported building a border fence nearly a decade before Trump made such a pledge a cornerstone of his campaign for the White House.
In 2005, Pence joined efforts to pass a sweeping immigration bill that was among the first to propose hundreds of miles of fencing along the Mexican border. It also proposed a $3,000 fine for immigrants living in the country illegally who agreed to leave and then stayed. It created punishments for aiding an immigrant living in the country illegally. The proposal was approved by the House, but failed in the Senate.
A year later he supported the successful Secure Fence Act of 2006, a narrower bill focused on border security that ultimately led to the construction of nearly 700 miles of border fencing.

Pence said on Wednesday that he supports Trump's "vision for the country" when asked about Trump's proposal to build a wall at the Mexican border.
"I think as President Ronald Reagan said, a nation without borders is not a nation," Pence said. "I think it's absolutely essential that we have border security and I have strongly supported that throughout my career. We have to get the border under control and I support Donald Trump. I think he's got the right vision for this country."
Pence co-sponsored the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors Act of 2006, a bill to let border states use federal grant money to build "a physical barrier" near the Mexican and Canadian borders to stop illegal immigration.
A year earlier he supported a proposal to let border states launch militias whose members could make arrests.
Pence has also signaled support for a changes to immigration law that would redefine which children born in the United States would automatically become citizens.
He supported a bill in 2007 and again in 2009 that would have limited automatic citizenship to children who have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, legal permanent resident or is serving on active duty in the military.
A 2005 version of the bill that he supported called for automatic citizenship for children whose parents were married, so long as one of the parents was a citizen or legal resident. In cases of unmarried parents, the child's mother had to be a citizen or legal resident.

In business and politics, Donald Trump likes to go with his gut. His selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as a running mate appears to be a lesson in what happens when he doesn't.
Trump introduced Pence as his No. 2 on Saturday, passing over candidates with whom he has a more personal connection in favor of an experienced politician with solid conservative credentials. GOP leaders - many lukewarm at best about the outsider at the top of their ticket - were nearly unanimous in praise.
Yet getting to that moment of party unity was chaotic, with many of the twists and turns playing out in public - and not in a way the spotlight-seeking Trump prefers.
On its own, the muddled lead-up to Saturday's announcement is unlikely to impact Trump's standing in his general election fight with Democrat Hillary Clinton. But it provides some of the clearest indications yet of how he might handle high-pressure decisions as president, where few choices are easy and his personal preferences are just one of many factors to consider.

"It does cause one to question how and what kind of process he would use if he were actually president and had to make some of the decisions," said Lanhee Chen, the policy director to Republican Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Still, he said it was instructive that Trump "can be influenced against what his instincts tell him."
By midday last Wednesday, Trump and his aides were signaling that he had decided to go with Pence. The campaign was making plans for a splashy Friday announcement aimed at dominating the weekend news cycle heading into the Republican convention.
Then came a hectic Thursday.
Trump was in California for fundraisers, thousands of miles from his closest advisers, including his oldest children. A voracious consumer of news, Trump fumed as he watched television reports declaring he had settled on Pence before he'd made a call to the governor. Two Republicans with knowledge of the process said he felt boxed in by advisers and other Republicans who preferred Pence over the two other finalists, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
A call from Trump Thursday afternoon prompted Pence to get on a plane to New York for an announcement the next day. But shortly after the governor touched down on the East Coast, Trump declared in a television interview that he had not made a "final, final" decision. He further clouded the process when he abruptly postponed his announcement event, citing the truck attack in Nice, France, that left more than 80 people dead.
Around midnight, Trump and his top advisers convened a conference call to discuss the frenzied day. That fueled speculation that Trump might be changing his mind.
Only Trump knows exactly his level of certainty as he zeroed in on one of the most important decisions of his campaign. Top advisers vigorously deny he considered making a late change, with campaign chairman Paul Manafort saying he "never waffled once he made his decision." Notably, Manafort did not say when that decision was made.
It was enough of a muddle for Hillary Clinton's campaign to leap into action and draw attention to what they cast as Trump's apparent wavering. Her campaign released a web video Saturday contrasting clips of the Republican touting his decisiveness with the timeline of the past few days. As the video ends, the words on the screen read, "Donald Trump. Always Divisive. Not so Decisive."
Indeed, Trump's own actions - saying he'd not made a final decision even after Pence was summoned to New York, then delaying the announcement - left the distinct impression of doubt.
So, too, did the actual announcement event on Saturday, at which Trump meandered for nearly a half hour on a variety of topics - including an update on the construction of his new hotel in Washington - before finally calling Pence to the stage, only to then immediately walk away. There were no "Trump-Pence" signs in the room, which appeared dark and somewhat subdued on television.
"With picking a VP, it just looks bad in the press," Pete Wehner, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and a sharp critic of Trump, said of the whole process. "That's a lot different when you have the powers of the presidency."
Indeed, Trump needs to look no further than the man he's hoping to succeed for a warning about how even a single instance of indecision can linger.
In 2013, President Barack Obama was on the brink of launching airstrikes against Syria for using chemical weapons against civilians, something he'd said crossed a "red line." Then, Obama pulled back, saying he first wanted to get approval from Congress. A vote was never held and the strikes were never launched.
Obama has spent the past three years defending that decision. It put Middle East allies on edge over his commitment to the region's security, and even some of his advisers have said it was a mistake to stand down.
A long and bruising campaign with Clinton stands between Trump and the possibility of that kind of high-stakes situation. Time for voters to weigh both his instincts and actions.