Photo shows a Naturalization Ceremony Grand Canyon National Park via Wikimedia Commons
In the clearest policy statement yet on the issue of immigration, President Donald Trump has said his administration is not seeking to reduce the number of immigrants entering the United States legally.
The United States takes in around one million legally authorized immigrants each year, and according to the Pew Research organization, new immigrants will be the key to America maintaining the levels of required workforce for at least two decades come.
In an interview with the Economist, Trump did not detail any specific economic imperatives of immigration but unambiguously stated there would be no cut to the number of legally entering immigrants, and that he wants talented people, who contribute to America ,to come into the United States.
President Trump’s issuance of an executive order banning entry of citizens from seven Muslim majority nations – later reduced to six – and a flawed enforcement of the order gave rise to speculations that the Trump Administration might also cut down on legal immigration numbers.
The president’s statement also marks a departure from the political rhetoric on the issue of immigration during the 2016 election.
But Trump reiterated his pledge to enforce a strong vetting of the people desiring to immigrate to the United States. He also said the United States wants farm workers to come and indicated the U.S. would have a visa for such workers.
Trump has continued to stick to his tough stand on stopping illegal immigration.
Here is the transcript of the Economist’s questions and President Trump’s answers on the issue of immigration as released by the magazine, whose editors interviewed the president on May 4:
Do you want to curb legal immigration?
Oh sure, you know, I want to stop illegal immigration.
And what about legal immigration? Do you want to cut the number of immigrants?
Oh legal, no, no, no. I want people to come into the country legally. No, legally? No. I want people to come in legally. But I want people to come in on merit. I want to go to a merit-based system. Actually two countries that have very strong systems are Australia and Canada. And I like those systems very much, they’re very strong, they’re very good, I like them very much. We’re going to a much more merit-based system. But I absolutely want talented people coming in, I want people that are going to love our country coming in, I want people that are going to contribute to our country coming in. We want a provision at the right time, we want people that are coming in and will commit to not getting…not receiving any form of subsidy to live in our country for at least a five-year period.
But the numbers of those people could be as high as the numbers that are coming in legally now? You’re not looking to reduce the numbers?
Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, we want people coming in legally. No, very strongly. Now they’re going to be much more strongly vetted as you see. You know, we’ve broken the all-time record [of detentions at the border] by many times, 73, we’re up to 73, it’s going to go up to almost 80% at the border, we’ve…you know, really stopped it. We also want farm workers to be able to come in. You know, we’re going to have work visas for the farm workers. If you look, you know we have a lot of people coming through the border, they’re great people and they work on the farms and then they go back home. We like those people a lot and we want them to continue to come in.
