Does the Trump Administration want to stop illegal immigration, or nearly all legal immigration, including foreign students? The evidence is growing that it wants the latter, which will sharply reduce the human capital the U.S. needs to prosper.
The President on Wednesday suspended foreign nationals from entering the U.S. to study at Harvard. His proclamation invokes a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that lets the president suspend entry of any class of aliens that would be detrimental to the U.S. This is the same law he used to impose his first-term travel ban.
But the vast majority of foreign students at Harvard don’t pose a national security threat. Just the opposite. Many assist with research that is a national asset. While the Administration is clearly trying to use every lever it has to punish Harvard for not surrendering to its sweeping demands, the ban is also part of its broader attack on foreign talent.
The problem is that Trump has a 2 year time period in which to accomplish his goals. There's a reasonable chance that the 2026 elections will hand Congress back to the Democrats so he needs to push things through now.
ReplyDeleteThis is a problem with the American system. Unlikely the Canadian system where both parties are essentially liberal but with different colours of neck ties, America has two opposing parties willing to undo the agenda of their others when it regains power. Trump approves something. Biden revokes it. Obama brings in Obamacare. Trump neuters it.
In a more mature system, DOGE would have a five year plan to reduce the size of government by 25% through hiring freezes, early retirements and efficiency assessments to remove superfluous staff. Instead, DOGE has 2 years or less to get the same thing done so it pushes through hard.
Same thing with the immigration issue. A five year plan to ensure that all foreign students have no connections to hostile regimes {cough, cough, China, Russia) along with putting in place a screening system for all new students to ensure the same would reduce the risk of hostile foreign students ("it says here that you plan to use your degree in engineering to 'free Palestine') and maintain a decent system. But if Trump doesn't get it done fast, nothing will happen.
Because he knows that even if he implemented DOGE and immigration reform with a five year plan, a hostile Congress or incoming Democratic president will just cancel all of it anyway.