Trump is planning a crackdown on legal immigration, too

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 portion Trump rails against amerciable immigration, his allies 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 enforcement orders, regulations, and memos that would constrictive the paths for ineligible migration to the US, according to a twelve erstwhile Trump medication officials that spoke with the Journal. Some of the proposals — similar a prohibition connected travelers from definite Muslim-majority countries — are recycled from Trump’s archetypal term. Other plans see a full prohibition connected exile resettlement and a intermission connected accepting applications for categories of migration with ample backlogs, including asylum and employment-based greenish cards for Indian tech workers.

Trump besides restricted ineligible migration during his archetypal term. Trump lowered the ceiling connected the fig of refugees that could beryllium resettled successful the US each twelvemonth helium 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 adjacent for the Trump medication — 1 that is underscored by the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of Trump and his moving mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

Vance has repeatedly 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 enactment successful the US for up to 2 years — arsenic illegal.

Stephen Miller, a elder advisor during Trump’s archetypal word and 1 of the architects of the administration’s household separation policy, has besides expressed a tendency 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 wherefore 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 authoritative Ken Cuccinelli, recommends replacing our family-based migration strategy with a “merit-based strategy that rewards high-skilled aliens.”

Cuccinelli’s different proposals see ending the diverseness visa lottery, which gives radical from countries with debased migration rates to the US a accidental to use for imperishable residency. These policies would necessitate legislature enactment and are truthful improbable to happen, but they’re inactive an instructive look astatine what Trump and his allies anticipation to execute during a 2nd term.