The U.S.- Mexican border (John Moore/Getty Images)

By John Gizzi
Monday, 11 Jul 2016 06:19 PM

Despite efforts by some of its members to "soften" official party language dealing with illegal immigration, the Government Reform Subcommittee of the full Republican Platform Committee on Monday voted resoundingly to keep most of the party’s 2012 positions on this sensitive issue.

The panel, in fact, even toughened the GOP stand on illegal immigration by including in its official manifesto an endorsement of certain-presidential nominee Donald Trump’s call to "build the wall" along the Southern border of the U.S. with Mexico.

"It was an emphatic endorsement of building the wall along the Southern part of the U.S.," Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a subcommittee member and leading expert of illegal immigration, told Newsmax, "And I mean a real wall, not a fake wall of barbed wire and helicopter patrols."

Kobach wrote much of the immigration plank in the ’12 platform. Before the subcommittee met on Monday morning, he pointed out to us that "most of the language in the drafts [that members were presented prior to their subcommittee meetings] included major proportions of what we had on illegal immigration in the ’12 platform."

But throughout the morning's hearings, there were clear examples of subcommittee members toughening the party’s stand on the issue. At one point, subcommittee members moved to remove words of support for English as "the official language" and offered alternate language that would not upset Hispanic-American voters by suggesting they could not speak their native tongue.

Kobach remonstrated that the Republican Party "should never suggest we back off making [English] the official language of the U.S. In so doing, he explained, "making it the official language has an impact only on communication in government. It certainly doesn’t dictate to anyone how they communicate with one another or in their homes."

The subcommittee also approved platform planks condemning President Obama’s executive orders that brought about amnesty for illegal immigrants and called for the federal government to cut back on the number of green cards it issues to permit foreigners to work in the U.S.

http://www.newsmax.com/John-Gizzi/gi.../11/id/738160/