Trump’s Surprising Promise to Immigrants Quickly Retracted by Campaign

Donald Trump made a very interesting immigration proposal on a podcast released Thursday: giving green cards to all foreign college graduates in the United States. But hours later, his campaign said the plan would not be so clear-cut.

Appearing with right-wing tech baron David Sacks on the All-In podcast, Trump said he would implement the proposal helping international students if he returns to the White House. It’s a departure from Trump’s usual anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the statement came after one of the other podcast hosts, investor Jason Calcanis, asked him to “promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.”

“I do promise, but I happen to agree,” Trump said, and added that “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.”

If Trump was serious, it would open up citizenship possibilities to a large number of foreigners—there were about one million international students in the United States in 2022, for example. But Trump’s campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, walked back the plan hours later, issuing a statement to The New York Times that it would include an “aggressive vetting process,” excluding “all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.” She added that the plan would only include the “most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America.”

This would seem to bring the college plan in line with Trump’s previous immigration policies, which have been long criticized as xenophobic, racist, and cruel. The mention of “aggressive vetting” seems very similar to “extreme vetting,” which was the language used to describe Trump’s travel ban, frequently referred to as a “Muslim ban” for its targeting of nationals from several Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, Trump’s new proposal for international students came shortly after he claimed that high levels of immigration constitute an “invasion of our country.”

Trump’s recent rhetoric also makes clear his views on immigration haven’t improved: He’s discussed a mass deportation plan involving police, continues to smear immigrants as criminals, and makes crazy rants at the southern U.S. border. Even before his campaign walked back his college plan, it should have been taken with a big grain of salt.