Thousands of Chinese Immigrants Could Be Given Residency Under Trump Plan

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students could be offered permanent residency under Trump’s hypothetical plan to give green cards to anyone who graduates from a U.S. college.

On the June 20 episode of the All-In Podcast, the former president said that if he won November’s election, on day one of his second term, he would allow any foreign student who graduates from a two- or four-year college in the U.S. to “automatically” receive the right to stay and work in the country.

In the fiscal year ending in September 2023, the U.S. State Department granted more than 600,000 international student visas, 289,526 of which went to Chinese students, making them the largest group of international students in the U.S., the 2023 Report of the Visa Office showed.

So if Trump’s plan had been in place last year, almost 300,000 Chinese students would have been able to remain in the U.S. after their studies.

Under the current rules, people living in the U.S. on student visas generally have a 60-day grace period to remain in the country after completing their course.

While there are exceptions—such as applying for Optional Practical Training, which allows graduates to work in their field for up to 12 months—students would otherwise need to apply for a new visa to stay in the country long term.

On the podcast, Trump spoke with the hosts about skilled workers, with one telling the former president: “Every time we get somebody superintelligent—from India or Europe, any country … that’s a loss for our adversaries and our competitors, and it’s a gain for us.

“But I’ve never heard you talk about this. Can you please promise us that you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America?”

Trump answered, “I do promise, but I happen to agree.” The former president went on to say: “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.”

He continued: “I know 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 go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places, and they become multibillionaires who employ thousands and thousands of people, and it could have been done here.

“And a bigger example is, you need a pool of people to work for your companies—you have great companies—and they have to be smart people. Not everybody can be less than smart. You need brilliant people.”

“The people that graduate from college, the people that are No. 1 in their class at the best colleges, you have to be able to recruit these people,” the former president said.

“Somebody graduates at the top of the class, they can’t even make a deal with a company because they don’t think they’re going to be able to stay in the country,” Trump added. “That is going to end on day one.”

Several people spoke out against the hypothetical policy on social media, with U.S. Tech Workers, a nonprofit that advocates “on behalf of American workers harmed by employment visa programs,” writing that it “isn’t America first.”

Others agreed with the policy, with one user writing on X that it was important to “provide opportunities for well-educated, motivated, and healthy foreigners who want to assimilate here to help make our country even better.”