More recently, he has suggested that an increase in people seeking to emigrate from China is a sign that the Chinese government is building an army (small and poorly equipped) within the United States — an easier admission than that the strong economy continues to be a draw for immigrants. And yet, in a podcast discussion on Thursday, Trump also proposed granting permanent residency to tens of thousands of military-age men from China.
Though he might not have known it.
“What I wanted to do, and 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,” Trump said on the “All-In” podcast. The idea, he added, would apply to anyone graduating from a two- or four-year institution.
This is not typical Trump rhetoric, to say the least. In fact, as The Washington Post’s initial report notes, it’s a proposal that was championed during the 2016 presidential contest by Trump’s opponent.
As you might expect, the government has long kept data on the number of foreign students enrolled in American universities — numbers that have grown dramatically over time.
In 1980-1981 school year, for example, there were about 312,000 foreign students enrolled in American colleges and universities. About 56 percent of them were from Asia. A quarter were from North America (Canada and Mexico primarily) or from Africa.
Many of those students were from a country that wouldn’t be most people’s first guess, 44 years later. More than a quarter of them came from Iran — an immediate effect of the Iranian revolution. (Social unrest is a trigger for migration, something worth remembering in the broader conversation about immigration.) In the 1980-1981 school year, there were 17 students from Iran for every one from China.
The most recent data shows the extent to which students from Asia now dominate the foreign-student population. Which makes sense: 36 percent of the world lives in China or India.
(The charts below use the same scale as the charts for the 1980-1981 school year. The data for that year is shown with dashed-line circles.)
In the 2022-2023 school year, more than half of foreign students came from those two countries. There are now 27 Chinese students for every one from Iran.
The number of foreign students studying in American colleges last year topped 1 million, more than three times the number in 1980. The government gives out about 1 million green cards each year as it is; Trump’s proposal could increase that figure by 25 percent.
The idea behind granting green cards to these students is straightforward: Why shouldn’t the United States try to retain people who travel to this country to sharpen their skills? The United States has long been and continues to be advantaged by the willingness of some of the world’s most talented people to move here; the proposal offered by Trump would make that process easier.
But it is hard to reconcile that idea with Trump’s other rhetoric on immigration — rhetoric that is fundamental to his political support. There’s little reason to think that Trump would actually implement this policy; his scattershot campaign agenda makes no mention of it and he does have a demonstrated habit of making things up as he goes.
He also has a more robust campaign infrastructure around him, which quickly shifted into gear after his comments became public.
In a statement to The Post, campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that graduates would be screened to weed out “communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.” The policy, she said, would apply only to the “most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.” How one would define “America hating” or ensure that an immigrant would “never undercut American wages” is, to say the least, unclear.
This is the fundamental tension in Trump’s immigration rhetoric. He wants only certain kinds of immigrants to come to the United States, recognizing that some immigrants offer some value. His rhetoric often ignores that distinction, and the value he sees often diverges from what is objectively valuable. He acknowledges that some immigrants are good, but his politics demand that he not spend too much time identifying which ones. So he generally avoids doing so.
The result is that military-age men from China seeking to move to the United States by crossing the border from Mexico are framed as dangerous members of a traitorous fifth column, even if they’re entering as refugees fleeing the Chinese government. Military-age men from China attending college in the United States, though? They should get fast-tracked immigration status, even if the Chinese government has helped promote their education.
Squaring this circle requires nothing more complicated than figuring out which of those immigrants is an America-hater. Simple enough.
