Former President Donald Trump raised eyebrows with his surprise vow to staple green cards to diplomas of foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges, but analysts said it wasn’t surprising to those who have closely watched him over the years.
Mr. Trump has long advocated for a rewrite of the immigration system that rewards merit while opposing unfettered illegal immigration or programs that dole out visas based on luck or extended family ties.
“Trump is saying we are going to let you in if you can contribute something to the country,” said Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement at the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank. “It really is an America First immigration policy versus [President Biden’s] open borders, which is let everybody in and see what happens.”
Mr. Trump revealed his green card plans in a recent podcast after being prodded by Silicon Valley investors about their need for a broader pool of high-skilled workers.
“What I will do is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges,” Mr. Trump said. “Anybody graduates from a college — you go there for two years or four years — if you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a country you should be able to stay in this country.”
Mr. Trump said it is “so sad” when the nation pushes out graduates from Harvard, MIT and “lesser schools also” when they could contribute to the nation.
The message irked some MAGA loyalists.
“Trump is the man for the hour but he needs to ignore the tech guys making him say this,” Ned Ryun, a longtime conservative activist, said on social media. “They can stroke checks, sure. But the base is the votes. And they are not for this at all.”
But Mr. Aguilar, who served as chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship in the Bush administration, said the message was vintage Trump.
“He is not saying ‘I hate immigration’ or anything like that, he is just saying ‘I don’t want mass migration that facilitates the entry of criminals and terrorists,’” Mr. Aguilar told The Washington Times.
The podcast isn’t the first time Mr. Trump has praised high-skilled immigrants.
During a 2016 GOP presidential primary debate, Mr. Trump announced he was “changing” his stance on H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, saying the country needed to “get them in.”
After the debate, his campaign walked back the statement, saying he wasn’t changing.
In the wake of his new green-card announcement, Mr. Trump’s campaign has offered similar clarifications, saying his top immigration priorities are securing the border and launching the “largest mass deportation effort of illegal immigrants in history.”
“President Trump has also outlined the most aggressive vetting process ever to exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, American haters and public charges,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He believes only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America.”
“This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers,” Ms. Leavitt said.
That’s closer to the message Mr. Trump has staked out in this campaign, where he accuses Mr. Biden of undoing all of his get-tough policies, with the effect of unleashing the worst border chaos in modern American history.
That has drawn jabs of “xenophobia” from immigrant rights activists.
But Mr. Trump’s immigration policies have always been more complicated than that.
His wife, Melania, is believed to have been in the U.S. on an H-1B visa when she met Mr. Trump.
And in 2018, Mr. Trump attempted to strike a bipartisan immigration deal that would have included full legalization for “Dreamers” here under the Obama-era DACA program, in exchange for funding for his border wall, new limits on the chain of family migration and an end to the visa lottery that gives away green cards by random chance.
He has also vowed to end birthright citizenship for nearly everyone born on U.S. soil, including children born to immigrants who are in the country illegally.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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