Editors Note: With fewer than seven weeks until the Nov. 8 presidential election, many voters have yet to make up their minds. As part of an occasional series of articles, we’ll check in with undecided voters for their thoughts about key issues and developments during the campaign.

ATLANTA — Malorie Morris said she likes that Donald Trump seems to have taken a more reasonable tact on immigration, even if she questions his sincerity.

The young conservative from Warner Robins, Georgia, suspects that Trump’s advisers are steering the Republican presidential nominee away from remarks similar to his earlier controversial comments and unsympathetic approach to securing the border.

She said she hopes Trump will listen to them.

“I think he’s lost his sensitivity, in the sense that we’re dealing with real people and real families,” said Morris, a student at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. “Immigration is a big issue, but they’re not just numbers, they’re people.”

Morris is among a small group of Georgians who are still weighing their options as the Nov. 8 election nears, amid a campaign that has put a sharp focus on U.S. immigration policy. Morris said Trump’s hard-line approach is one reason she is still on the fence.

That same approach, though, is part of what buoyed the unlikely, populist candidacy of the New York real estate developer. Voters on the right rallied behind his calls for mass deportations and an aggressive approach to border security in response to concerns about terrorism.

More recently, Trump has slightly dialed back the intensity.

While this may have made Trump more appealing to Morris and others like her, it hasn’t sit well with Daniel Sutton, a 30-year-old truck driver from Chatsworth who identifies as a lifelong conservative.

“He’s backing off, and he’s painting it with a broad brush,” Sutton said. “He’s trying to appeal to Hispanic voters and trying to make them think that he’s not going to deport them and he’s not going to do all these mean things.

“You don’t know what this man’s going to do, just because he flips and flops so much,” he said.

Most notably, Trump now says only immigrants from certain countries, like Syria, should be banned from entering the United States. Earlier in the campaign, he famously proposed a ban of all Muslims from entering the country.

He also recently said that his administration will prioritize the deportation of the “most dangerous” immigrants who are unlawfully living in the United States.

This sharper focus on criminals is not unlike what Trump’s rival, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, vows to do – or what President Barack Obama’s administration does now, said Jason Cade, an immigration law professor at the University of Georgia.

Where Cade sees a stark contrast is in the candidates’ take on what to do with millions of others who are here unlawfully but who have stayed out of trouble.

Although Trump has at times signaled that he is open to creating a path to citizenship for those immigrants, he has also emphatically said the only route to legalization will be for them to leave the country and come back.

But, unless Congress significantly changes the law, it’s unlikely that many of those 11 million people now here without authorization would be able to return legally, Cade said.

For starters, a 10-year prohibition on returning to the United States kicks in once those who have been here for one year leave. Many also simply lack a pathway to lawful status under current law, Cade said.

Clinton, meanwhile, has said she will continue to defend Obama’s executive actions that extend protection to millions of people living here unlawfully. Some of those programs have been turned back in court, while others face legal challenge.

“There, they just have completely divergent views that I think reflect different world views about what it means to be a member of the community in the United States,” Cade said.

Jessica Tucker, an undecided voter who lives in Moultrie, said she is concerned that Trump’s immigration polices will move the country further away from its founding principles.

Tucker agrees that more should be done to control the flow of people and drugs into the country, but she sees Trump’s polices as being too severe.

America, she said, is “supposed to be a place of refuge.”

“We stole it from somebody,” said Tucker, who works as a school counselor in Florida. “We came here as undocumented. This is supposed to be the melting pot of the world. You start taking people out of it, and that’s not what (America) was built on.”

Kenneth Ellinger, a political science professor at Dalton State College, said Trump’s policies are unlikely to appeal to voters with moderate views.

Trump has recently “sent up some trial balloons hinting at a kinder, gentler immigration policy,” Ellinger noted.

But then, he added, Trump offered up assurances to supporters that all immigrants unlawfully living in the United States will have to return to their home country, and that Mexico will pay for a wall along the border.

“That is just more political ‘red meat’ for his staunchest immigrant-hating supporters,” Ellinger said.

“Anyone with even a shred of knowledge about immigration knows that telling people to go back to their home country and wait in line is the exact same thing as telling them they will never be able to legally live in America,” he said.

Cade said he was also struck by Trump’s pledge to implement some type of ideological screening for immigrants, although Trump has revealed few details about what it would involve.

“Unless it’s a true national security or terrorism threat, we should not be keeping people out simply on the basis of ideas that would be completely lawful if a U.S. citizen was doing it in the United States,” he said, referring to his interpretation of current immigration law.

Doing so, he said, runs contrary to the American commitment to “the free flow of ideas and tolerance for all religions and so forth.”

Even the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign – a pledge to build a border wall – isn’t always well received by conservatives.

Sutton, for one, said there are more cost-effective ways to address immigration problems.

For example, he would prefer to see the E-Verify program strengthened and expanded, which is something Trump has proposed. When employers hire immigrants who aren’t eligible to work, they should be fined, he said.

“They’ll self-deport. You don’t have to build a big Trump-wall across the border to get these people to leave,” he said.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.