Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is walking back comments that he made during the “All-In Podcast” on June 20. Trump said he wants to automatically give green cards to migrants who complete their higher education in the United States, prompting backlash.
“Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools and from the lesser schools that are phenomenal schools,” Trump said. “And what I wanted to do — and I would’ve done this but then we had to solve the COVID problem because that came in and sort of dominated for a little while, as you perhaps know. But what I want to do and 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, too.”
Critics — many of whom have been longtime Trump supporters — took issue with the plan. Led by groups such as the Conservative Immigration Accountability Project, those critics argued that the green card plan “would reduce wages for all Americans, increase job competition, particularly for recent college graduates, and pose a national security threat.”
Critics said they want the “best and brightest” coming to America and working skilled jobs.
Leadership at NumbersUSA, an advocate group for “better immigration,” told The Washington Post that Trump’s plan would “turn colleges into visa mills.”
Trump’s campaign is now clarifying the former president’s comments.
Trump’s team assured that he promises to shut down the border and deport migrants in mass numbers if they are in the country illegally.
President Joe Biden’s campaign responded that Trump’s first term left countless people damaged and accused him of promising “cruel policies like rounding up immigrants and putting them into mass detention camps.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said the green card proposal would include an “aggressive vetting process” that would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.”
The campaign said the program “would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”
During the “All-In Podcast” interview, Trump said he believed too many migrants come to the U.S. to receive an education and then go build companies in India or China instead of the U.S. because they can’t secure long-term residency.
“They do the same basic company in those places and they become multi-billionaires,” Trump said. “Employing thousands and thousands of people and it could’ve been done here.”
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