Softening his stance on immigration, former US President Donald Trump has promised to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from US colleges to prevent them from returning to their home countries like India and China where they become multibillionaires.
Trump’s departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric comes ahead of the November presidential election in which immigration and deportation of illegal immigrants are among the key issues for voters.
Trump, however, always supported a merit-based legal immigration system.
“What I want to do and what I will do is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get a Green Card automatically as part of your diploma, a Green Card to be able to stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges too,” Trump, 78, said in the “All-In” podcast.
A Green Card, known officially as a permanent resident card, is an identity document showing a person has permanent residency in the United States.
The podcast was hosted by four venture capitalists: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, three of whom are immigrants.
Trump’s remarks came as he was pressed by Calacanis to “promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.” Trump, the presumptive candidate from the Republican Party, also lamented “stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t — they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places.
“...and they become multi-billionaires employing thousands and thousands of people, and it could have been done here,” he said.
Trump reiterated his first-term policy, about foreign students getting a Green Card after receiving a degree from a higher education institution in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field.
Trump had at times sought to reform the nation’s immigration system to scale back family-based immigration and to prioritise wealthy immigrants, who had valuable work skills or who were highly educated.
Trump expanded restrictions on legal immigration during the pandemic and his last year in office and had proposed suspending all immigration to the United States and deporting foreign students if they did not attend at least some classes in person.
A month before the 2020 election, Trump again moved to restrict the H-1B visa programme.
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