The United States presidential election is of utmost importance to foreigners not just because the country is one of the most developed in the world but also because a new President would either boost or put a decline in immigration.
With former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris as the main contenders for the oval office, whoever wins the United States Presidency after the November 5 exercise will play a pivotal role in implementing immigration policies and determining how they affect Nigerians and other foreigners.
It is noteworthy to mention that the policies being championed by both candidates during their campaigns are also likely to impact where the US election victory pendulum swings.
Hereunder are the immigration campaign policies of Trump and Kamala Harris and how they would most likely impact foreigners in America or would-be immigrants:
Reform Birthright Citizenship Proposal:
Trump announced in a video posted to his campaign website on May 30, 2024, that he would disqualify children born in the United States by undocumented parents from gaining automatic US citizenship, passports, Social Security numbers, and “certain taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.”
This implies that to qualify for birthright citizenship, at least one parent must be a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.
According to Trump’s campaign, this policy also ends ‘birth tourism’ which was defined as a situation where “tens of thousands of foreign nationals fraudulently enter the U.S. each year during the final weeks of their pregnancies for the sole purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their child.”
Domestic Deportation Plans: Trump pledged to implement the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” In a detailed interview with the New York Times on November 11, 2023, Stephen Miller presented and supported the policy proposal concerning Trump’s immigration plans for 2025. This proposal was further emphasised during the first presidential debate on June 27, 2024.
Visa Issuance and Ideological Screening: Trump intends to broaden ideological screening during the visa issuance process to prevent immigrants that his administration deems to have “undesirable attitudes” from entering the US. In particular, any “sympathy for jihadists, Hamas, or Hamas ideology will lead to automatic disqualification.”
Trump first announced this policy proposal on his campaign’s X (formerly Twitter) account on October 16, 2023.
Automatic Green Cards For Foreign Graduates: LEADERSHIP recalls that Trump promised to automatically award ‘Green Cards’ to vetted, noncitizen graduates of US colleges, junior colleges, and universities.
However, Trump clarified in a statement to ABC News on June 21, 2024, that “radical Islamists, Hamas supporters”, and “America haters” are excluded from this policy proposal.
End of TPS Designations: Trump has also proposed to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations which allow migrants to legally reside and work within the United States for up to 18 months, subject to renewal for foreign nationals of certain countries.
If elected president again, the former President sought to terminate TPS for foreign nationals of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal. Recall that after assuming office, Biden extended TPS for those countries as well as Burma, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cameroon, and Syria.
For her part, Kamala Harris has pledged the following policies:
Creation Of Green Card-Eligible Visas: Harris has proposed to create 250,000 green card-eligible employment-based and family visas over the next five years. This policy proposal would increase employment-based visas by 13 percent and family-based visas by 7 percent through 2030.
Harris promised in 2020 to close private immigration detention centers, limit deportations, and fight for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States.
She recently reiterated that she wants to sign into law the tough border compromise that Congress was unable to pass in 2024 after Donald Trump objected to it.
Commitment to Immigration Reform: Her 2024 campaign team said that her position on border crossings was the same as the Biden administration’s, and that “unauthorised border crossings are illegal.” At the Democratic National Convention in August, she reiterated: “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”
Pathway to Citizenship: In August, Harris also promised to create a pathway to U.S citizenship, “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” Harris said at the DNC in August.
“I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.”
The Vice President has repeatedly called the current immigration system “broken” and called for “reform” that includes an earned pathway to citizenship.
Asylum Access Measures: The Biden-Harris administration in June 2024 announced measures to sharply curb access to asylum at the border when illegal border crossings rise to emergency levels, following years of record levels of border crossings. However, as a presidential candidate, Harris was yet to comment on asylum.
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