During a podcast appearance last week, former President Donald Trump made an uncharacteristic argument. "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," he said, adding that he would even include graduates of junior colleges.
A Trump campaign spokesperson quickly tempered that proposal, promising an "aggressive vetting process" that would "exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges." The green card offer would only apply to college graduates "who would never undercut American wages or workers," the spokesperson continued. (It's important to couch Trump's initial statement even further: As The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell has pointed out, the Trump administration "implemented policies that further restricted skilled legal immigration and made the lives of these international workers and students a living hell.")
