Trump is planning a crackdown on legal immigration, too

Nov 01, 2024 12:44 AM - 1 week ago 14760

Former President Donald Trump has made migration a centerpiece of his campaign: he’s promised wide deportations, a crackdown connected asylum astatine the border, and a prohibition connected mortgages for undocumented immigrants. But while Trump rails against forbidden immigration, his friends and advisors are besides preparing to sharply trim ineligible immigration, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Groups including the America First Policy Institute, a deliberation vessel that has been advising Trump’s campaign, person drafted executive orders, regulations, and memos that would constrictive the paths for ineligible migration to the US, according to a twelve erstwhile Trump management officials that said pinch the Journal. Some of the proposals — for illustration a prohibition connected travelers from definite Muslim-majority countries — are recycled from Trump’s first term. Other plans see a full prohibition connected exile resettlement and a region connected accepting applications for categories of migration pinch ample backlogs, including asylum and employment-based greenish cards for Indian tech workers.

Trump besides restricted ineligible migration during his first term. Trump lowered the ceiling connected the number of refugees that could beryllium resettled successful the US each twelvemonth he was successful office. He expanded longstanding “public charge” regulations, allowing migration officials to contradict greenish cards to immigrants they suspected would person nationalist assistance. Still, crisp reductions successful ineligible migration would beryllium a extremist displacement moreover for the Trump management — 1 that is underscored by the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of Trump and his moving mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

Vance has many times blamed rising lodging costs connected immigrants, and has decried President Joe Biden’s parole argumentation — which lets migrants from countries including Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela unrecorded and activity successful the US for up to 2 years — arsenic illegal.

Stephen Miller, a elder advisor during Trump’s first word and 1 of the architects of the administration’s family separation policy, has besides expressed a desire to trim ineligible migration. “Refugee resettlement is ‘legal.’ Chain migration is ‘legal.’ Diversity lottery is ‘legal.’ Islamist greenish paper migration is ‘legal.’ And it’s why we request the Trump Travel Ban backmost now,” Miller posted connected X successful January.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the playbook written up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, besides proposes ending alleged “chain migration,” i.e., family-based migration. The Mandate’s section connected the Department of Homeland Security, written by erstwhile Trump DHS charismatic Ken Cuccinelli, recommends replacing our family-based migration strategy pinch a “merit-based strategy that rewards high-skilled aliens.”

Cuccinelli’s different proposals see ending the diverseness visa lottery, which gives group from countries pinch debased migration rates to the US a chance to use for imperishable residency. These policies would require legislature action and are truthful improbable to happen, but they’re still an instructive look astatine what Trump and his friends dream to execute during a 2nd term.

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