Trump proposes green cards for foreign graduates of US colleges, moving away from anti-immigrant rhetoric

MIAMI– Former president donald trump said in an interview published Thursday that it wants to grant automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges, a sharp departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric he normally uses it on the campaign trail.

Trump was asked about plans for companies to import the “best and brightest” in a podcast recorded on Wednesday with venture capitalists and technology investors called “All-In.”

“What I want to do and what I will do is if you graduate from college, I think you should automatically get as part of your degree a green card so you can stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges too, anyone graduates from a college. You’re there for two or four years,” he said, promising to address that concern on day one.

Immigration has been Trump’s main issue during his bid to return to the White House in 2024. His suggestion that he offer green cards – documents that provide a path to US citizenship – to potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates would represent an expansion of the US immigration system, which diverges sharply from its more common messages about foreigners.

Trump often says during his rallies that immigrants in the country illegally put public safety at risk and steal government jobs and resources, and once suggested that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He has promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history if he is elected.

Trump and his allies often say they distinguish between people who enter illegally and people who enter legally. But during his administration, Trump also proposed restrictions on legal immigration, such as family visas and the visa lottery program.

Shortly after taking office in 2017, he issued his “Buy American and Hire American” executive orderdirecting Cabinet members to suggest reforms to ensure business visas were granted only to the highest-paid or most qualified applicants to protect American workers.

He has previously said that the H1-B program commonly used by companies to temporarily hire foreign workers – a he used in the past – was “really bad” and used by tech companies to get foreign workers at lower wages.

During the conversation with “All-In”, Trump blamed the coronavirus pandemic for his failure to implement these measures while he was president. He said he knows stories of people who graduated from top colleges and want to stay in the U.S. but are unable to obtain visas to do so, forcing them to return to their home countries, specifically citing India and China. He said they go on and become multi-billion dollars, employing thousands of workers.

“You need a group of people to work for your company,” Trump said. “And they have to be smart people. Not everyone can be less than intelligent. You need brilliant people.”