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Donald Trump proposes green cards for foreign graduates of US colleges

  • Donald Trump’s green card proposal would appear to run counter to his hardline immigration stance

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Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin. Photo: TNS

Former US president Donald Trump said in an interview he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from US colleges, a sharp departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric he typically uses on the campaign trail.

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Trump was asked about plans for companies to be able to import the “best and brightest” in a podcast taped Wednesday with venture capitalists and tech investors called the “All-In”.

“What I want 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. And that includes junior colleges too, anybody graduates from a college. You go there for two years or four years,” he said, vowing to address this concern on day one.

Immigration has been Trump’s signature issue during his 2024 bid to return to the White House.

A green card is the commonly used name for a permanent resident card in the US and a step toward citizenship. Photo: Shutterstock
A green card is the commonly used name for a permanent resident card in the US and a step toward citizenship. Photo: Shutterstock

His suggestion that he would offer green cards - documents that confer a pathway to US citizenship - to potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates would represent a sweeping expansion of America’s immigration system that sharply diverges from his most common messages on foreigners.

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