WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump convulsed the immigration eco-system on Thursday by promising automatic green cards to all foreign students in America , including undergraduates, in what would be a repudiation of the strong anti-immigration sentiment of his political base. In a podcast with Silicon Valley investors and business leaders, Trump spoke 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, they do the same basic company in those places. And they become multibillionaires.
” Pledging to change this, the former President said he would institute policies where "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.” There was immediate blowback to the Trump announcement, with his supporters questioning "is this America First?" and what happened to “buy American, hire American?” But hours after the former President's unscripted remarks, his campaign officials tempered the comments, saying there would be an “aggressive vetting process” that would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges” and that the policy would apply only to the “most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to Ame.
