The campaign of Donald Trump is reneging on a pledge made by the outgoing president to grant green cards to all international students enrolled in US universities upon graduation.
“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,” Trump stated on Thursday’s episode of The All-In Podcast.
Trump stated that the measure will also apply to graduates of four-year universities.
“That includes junior colleges too. Anybody graduates from a college — you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate, or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”
The campaign has since shifted its focus to stressing the plan’s rigorous screening procedure after the concept was met with swift resistance.
It was “a cockamamie proposal,” according to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, who spoke with The New York Post.
“If someone earns a PhD at a university in a hard science, I personally will drive to their house and give them a green card,” Krikorian stated.
“The issue is any foreign college graduate, even from a bogus two-year master’s program or gender studies, would get a green card.”
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“President Trump has made it clear that on day one of his new administration, he’s going to shut down the border and launch the largest mass deportation effort of illegal aliens in history,” official for the Trump campaign Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to media outlets.
She said that a “aggressive vetting process” that would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters, and public charges” would be a part of Trump’s proposed green card program.
Leavitt added that, “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.”
The investor Jason Calacanis, one of the podcast’s hosts, questioned the former president, asking, “Can you please promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest from around the world to America?” The former president responded in kind.
Trump vented his annoyance at US grads who, unable to secure visas to remain in the nation, depart to establish enterprises in China or India.
