Top CEOs were seen nodding their heads when Trump talked about finding ways to keep American-educated talent at home.

By Meridith McGraw, Adam Wren, Natalie Allison and Adam Cancryn

06/22/2024 07:00 AM EDT

Donald Trump privately hinted at a shift in immigration policy at a Business Roundtable meeting last week. He told the group “we need brilliant people” in this country, according to one of the attendees, who was granted anonymity to describe a private meeting. And when he talked about finding ways to keep American-educated talent at home, some top CEOs, like Apple’s Tim Cook, were seen nodding their heads.

The public move came a week later: On “The All-In Podcast” on Thursday, Trump said foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities should “automatically” be given a green card upon graduation.

It was the latest major policy shift from a candidate who has proven equal parts hardline and chameleon-like over time. Trump’s pivot on immigration followed his reversal on TikTok, embracing an app he once tried to ban, and his shift on cryptocurrency.

To the former president’s allies, the reversals are evidence of a nuanced politician taking thoughtful new positions on rapidly changing issues.

But there is also plainly a pattern of Trump aligning his political stances with the views of wealthy donors and business interests.

“What Trump has always had an instinct for is figuring out how to scoop up people that he might not have previously thought he could get,” said Republican strategist Scott Jennings. “Now some people might say that’s craven or he doesn’t have any core values or whatever. But he’s got to win the election.”

Trump’s latest comments on visas did not come out of the ether, but evinced an evolution on immigration, an issue that has been a raison d'être of his political story. When he spoke to the Business Roundtable last week, some of the titans of the tech industry seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when Trump appeared to support keeping high-skilled immigrants in the United States.

Then, on Thursday, Trump fielded a question on “The All-In Podcast,” hosted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Trump donors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya: “Can you please promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest from around the world to America?”

“Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools and lesser schools that are phenomenal schools also,” Trump said.

“But 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 in there for two years or four years, if you graduate, or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”

For Trump — who has demonized undocumented immigrants and railed against the record levels of migration at the Southern border as a cornerstone of his 2024 presidential campaign — it was a significant change. Trump has called for mass deportations on the first day of his administration, has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of this country, and has highlighted high-profile crimes committed by migrants in the U.S. illegally.

On Friday, Trump’s critics pounced on his green card remarks.

“I’m very happy some adviser told him maybe he could take his foot off the massive deportation, prison camp, they’re all rapists and murderers narrative,” said Ben Johnson, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I just don’t know how serious to take this coming from somebody who’s spent 95 percent of his time being horrible on immigration.” And a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s campaign, Kevin Munoz, said, “Trump’s empty promise is both a lie and an insult, especially to the countless people that have been permanently damaged by his first-term in office.”

Trump floated a similar idea during his 2016 campaign, saying at the time that forcing non-citizens to leave the U.S. shortly after graduating from college was “ridiculous” and that they should have a path to citizenship.

But once elected president, Trump reversed himself, restricting immigration and limiting visas for high-skilled professionals and employers, much to the frustration of business leaders who rely on those visas to keep engineers and scientists in the U.S. Trump issued an executive order, “Buy American Hire American,” which encouraged businesses to protect American jobs and resulted in fewer H-1B visas. Biden revoked the order soon after taking office.
MOST READ
supreme-court-guns-36996.jpg

A surprising winner in the Supreme Court gun ruling: Hunter Biden
Judge Cannon wants to know whether Merrick Garland is supervising Jack Smith
Trump keeps flip-flopping his policy positions after meeting with rich people
The Guy Playing Trump in Biden’s Debate Prep Has Some Thoughts
Disappointment and ‘depression': Biden’s biggest fundraisers watch their advantage vanish

Trump, his campaign and his allies have sought to distinguish between those who have immigrated illegally versus those who have legally made their way through the immigration system. The former first lady, Melania Trump, immigrated to the U.S. on an employment visa, and last December spoke at a naturalization ceremony for immigrants at the National Archives. On Friday, the Trump campaign said any green cards would come only after “the most aggressive vetting process ever.”

“President Trump has made it clear that on day one of his new Administration, he’s going to shut down the border and launch the largest mass deportation effort of illegal aliens in history,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement, adding that he has “outlined the most aggressive vetting process ever to exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.”

She said that Trump “believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America. This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”

Trump has changed course before — not so much moderating on his positions but accommodating allies who have briefed him on the complexities of changing technology and business.

In office, Trump tried to unilaterally restrict social media platform TikTok from operating in the U.S., but he reversed course recently amid its popularity with youth, whose votes he and Biden are courting.

As a candidate, he said he would end a tax preference that is highly lucrative to private equity and some Wall Street financiers. Ultimately, however, the 2017 tax overhaul he assembled with GOP lawmakers included only some tweaks that made it somewhat harder to claim the tax break.

Trump took several positions on whether China should be labeled a currency manipulator — vowing to do so in the 2016 campaign and backing off after he took office. His administration ultimately made the move in 2019.

And then there’s Trump’s new embrace of cryptocurrency, which he criticized during his first term. Trump told the crypto faithful at Mar-a-Lago last month that they “better vote” for him because of the Biden administration’s regulatory clashes with the industry.

It was by no means an unexpected shift. Though Trump tweeted in 2019 that “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies,” top GOP policymakers have spent the ensuing years rallying around crypto interests and working to advance industry-friendly regulation.

“People’s positions evolve,” said Republican strategist and Trump ally David Urban, who lobbied for TikTok.

With cryptocurrency, TikTok, technology, Urban said, “a lot of these newer issues, there is some room for some thoughtful reflection. He’s hearing from different people, different voices, weighing different opinions. He gathers information about any topic, whether it’s the Vice President or a trade deal, he talks to people. He takes input from Steve Schwarzman to the police officer in the receiving line, and so his positions evolve.”

On TikTok, for example, Trump now has a personal account with over 6.5 million followers. He became interested in getting on the app, which has alleged Chinese connections, after learning about its potential and political reach from advisers and lobbyists.

Trump’s malleability on these issues is, according to detractors, a craven campaign ploy. But Trump’s flip flops, according to his own supporters, are unlikely to cost him anything with his base.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, a gathering of social conservatives, attendees said they trusted Trump with his new green card idea. Acknowledging, when pressed, that they would prefer students to have come to the country legally and have undergone a vetting process, Trump supporters nevertheless deferred to him. If it’s an immigration policy Trump is suggesting, several attendees said in interviews, he will ensure it’s one without safety risks.

“Obviously it’s following other immigration policies that he’s going to go through and put in place,” said Shea Thompson, a 20-year-old college student from Spokane, Washington. “Because as it stands, no, that would be a horrible thing, because of the problems with illegal immigration and everything.”

But it’s likely a “smart” idea from Trump, Thompson explained, with Trump having figured out how it would fit in with his plans to secure the southern border and “streamline legal immigration.”

Abigail Galán, 45, who co-pastors a predominantly Hispanic church in Columbia, Maryland with her husband and is originally from Puerto Rico, cheered on the proposal.

“It’s a good idea because the worry of the border is not students who want to do good in this country, it’s the bad people we’re scared of,” Galán said. “If they make the effort, if I had a son in that position, I would be thankful for that.”

Others were of a similar mind. Irving Widelitz, a 65-year-old conservative Jewish voter from Houston, said he could get behind Trump’s green card proposal “as long as they’re properly vetted.”

And if the student enrolled in college while in the United States illegally?

“That’s a slippery slope,” Widelitz conceded.