Trump is planning a crackdown on legal immigration, too

Former President Donald Trump has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign: he’s promised mass deportations, a crackdown on asylum at the border, and a ban on mortgages for undocumented immigrants. But while Trump rails against illegal immigration, his allies and advisors are also preparing to sharply reduce legal immigration, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Groups including the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that has been advising Trump’s campaign, have drafted executive orders, regulations, and memos that would narrow the paths for legal migration to the US, according to a dozen former Trump administration officials that spoke with the Journal. Some of the proposals — like a ban on travelers from certain Muslim-majority countries — are recycled from Trump’s first term. Other plans include a total ban on refugee resettlement and a pause on accepting applications for categories of immigration with large backlogs, including asylum and employment-based green cards for Indian tech workers.

Trump also restricted legal migration during his first term. Trump lowered the ceiling on the number of refugees that could be resettled in the US each year he was in office. He expanded longstanding “public charge” regulations, allowing immigration officials to deny green cards to immigrants they suspected would receive public assistance. Still, sharp reductions in legal immigration would be a radical shift even for the Trump administration — one that is underscored by the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

Vance has repeatedly blamed rising housing costs on immigrants, and has decried President Joe Biden’s parole policy — which lets migrants from countries including Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela live and work in the US for up to two years — as illegal.

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser during Trump’s first term and one of the architects of the administration’s family separation policy, has also expressed a desire to reduce legal migration. “Refugee resettlement is ‘legal.’ Chain migration is ‘legal.’ Diversity lottery is ‘legal.’ Islamist green card migration is ‘legal.’ And it’s why we need the Trump Travel Ban back now,” Miller posted on X in January.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the playbook written up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, also proposes ending so-called “chain migration,” i.e., family-based migration. The Mandate’s chapter on the Department of Homeland Security, written by former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, recommends replacing our family-based immigration system with a “merit-based system that rewards high-skilled aliens.”

Cuccinelli’s other proposals include ending the diversity visa lottery, which gives people from countries with low immigration rates to the US a chance to apply for permanent residency. These policies would require congressional action and are therefore unlikely to happen, but they’re still an instructive look at what Trump and his allies hope to achieve during a second term.