Trump proposes green cards for college graduates, echoing Clinton

Former President Trump proposed giving green cards to international college graduates in a podcast interview released Thursday.

“But what I wanna 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,” Trump said on the “All-In” podcast.

Trump’s words seems to mirror language used on former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s website during her 2016 campaign, which said that in “a comprehensive immigration solution, Hillary would ‘staple’ a green card to STEM masters and PhDs from accredited institutions — enabling international students who complete degrees in these fields to move to green card status.”

Trump also said he knows “of stories where people graduated from a top college, or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here. They had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t. … They go back to India, they go back to China.”

Trump recently went after 2024 election rival President Biden on immigration at a rally in Wisconsin in the wake of an announcement by the White House about an executive action that would let some immigrants without legal status but married to U.S. citizens stay in the country and work legally.

“Crooked Joe is sending a message to the world that he rewards illegal entry, and that’s what’s happening,” Trump said.

“Don’t kid yourself, the ones that are hurt the most, the Black population, the Hispanic population,” he continued. “And you know who else is hurt badly? Unions.”

“Every chance Donald Trump got in office, he made it his mission to rip apart immigrant families for his own political gain. He’s also proudly running to go even further in a second term, not only by openly echoing Nazi rhetoric around immigrants, but also by promising cruel policies like rounding up immigrants and putting them into mass detention camps,” Biden-Harris campaign spox Kevin Munoz said in a statement to The Hill on Friday. “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.”

Updated at 1:51 p.m. EDT