Former President Donald Trump made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign: he 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 advisers are also preparing to sharply reduce legal immigration.he Wall Street Journal reports.

Groups including the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that advised the Trump campaigndrafted executive orders, regulations and memos that would restrict legal migration pathways to the United States, according to a dozen former Trump administration officials who spoke with the government. Newspaper. Some of the proposals — like banning travel from certain Muslim-majority countries — are recycled from Trump’s first term. Other plans include a complete ban on refugee resettlement and a pause on accepting applications for immigration categories with large backlogs, including asylum and employment-based green cards for Indian tech workers.

Trump also restricted legal immigration during his first term. Asset lowered the ceiling on the number of refugees who could be resettled in the United States each year during his term. He long-standing expanded regulations on “public charges”allowing immigration officials to deny green cards to immigrants they suspected would receive public assistance. Still, a sharp reduction in legal immigration would be a sea change even for the Trump administration — one underscored by the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).

Vance repeatedly said blamed rising housing costs on immigrantsand has disparaged President Joe Biden’s parole policy — which allows migrants from countries like Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela to live and work in the United States for up to two years — is 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 immigration. “Refugee resettlement is “legal”. Chain migration is “legal”. The diversity lottery is “legal”. The migration of Islamist green cards is “legal”. And that’s why we need the Trump travel ban back now,” Miller posted on in January.

Project 2025 Leadership mandatethe manual, written by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, also proposes ending so-called “chain migration,” that is, 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 highly skilled foreign nationals.” .

Cuccinelli’s other proposals include ending the diversity visa lottery, which gives people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States the opportunity to apply for permanent residency. These policies would require congressional action and are therefore unlikely to come to fruition, but they nonetheless provide an instructive look at what Trump and his allies hope to achieve in a second term.