By Steve Levy
Candidate Donald Trump rode into office on a platform identifying with the average American’s frustration over unbridled illegal immigration.
It was an America First platform that prioritized American students in American universities over foreign students, and American workers to fill American jobs over foreigners.
And in fulfillment of his promise, he successfully curbed the flow of illegal immigration across our southern border.
He’s also been very aggressive in fighting the evils of the Chinese Communist Party. It was therefore somewhat shocking to hear the president claim that he will now import 600,000 students from Communist China to take seats in our American universities.
We know many of them spy for the CCP. We know many of them take seats that would otherwise go to Americans, especially in our state universities.
The Dems were too scared of being called racists, so they refrained from objecting to the fact that some public universities were reserving a quarter of their seats to foreigners. Part of the reason is that China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia funnel huge sums of money to the colleges in an unofficial understanding that the colleges will roll out the red carpet for their students and professors, many of whom wind up preaching anti-Americanism on campus.
So Trump‘s sudden turnaround on opening the door to 600,000 students from China was so un-Trump-like that it led to Trump loyalists such as Fox’s Laura Ingraham and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) to call out the president for this reversal.
Trump has still not adequately given a reason for this turnaround other than to say that universities are relying on this money. No kidding. How about they rely on money coming from American residents?
Much of Trump’s base also is concerned about his decision to bolster the H1-B Visa program that allows foreigners or their sponsoring companies to pay their way into high-skilled jobs in America.
This one is a little more complex than the student issue since we have many bigger companies, including Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, arguing how important obtaining these high-skilled workers is. At least there’s an argument to be made that these self-sufficient workers can contribute a great deal to the country and remain here.
But there’s also been the concern by many that the system has been abused and that they undercut the wages that would be paid to Americans filling those jobs.
It’s a subject of debate as to whether there is enough talent here in the U.S. to fill those jobs.
Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to sell visas for millions of dollars a pop, thereby raising tremendous revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
But it doesn’t sound much like an America First policy to us.
We acknowledged that there is a need for high-skilled immigrants, but it must be monitored and controlled.
It looks like Trump is going in the opposite direction. Time will tell whether the pressure from the MAGA base is enough to have Trump reverse course.