Trump defends H-1B; undercuts his own immigration narrative

Whether it’s building the wall or mass deportations, President Trump’s most memorable position for the past decade has been immigration.

But in a recent interview on Fox News, the president made it clear that his view on H-1B visas doesn’t align with his illegal immigration policy.

“Does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration? Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of workers,” host Laura Ingraham said to the president.

“You also do have to bring in talent,” Trump responded.

“Well, we have plenty of talented people,” Ingram fired back, to which Trump responded, “No, you don’t.”

“You can’t take people off … an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory; we’re going to make missiles.’ … It doesn’t work that way,” Trump continued.

“I mean, the truth is, like, Trump has always been a little squishy on this issue,” BlazeTV co-host Lomez says on “Rufo & Lomez,” pointing to an episode of the “All-In Podcast” where during an interview, the president spoke about preserving student visas.

“Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools and lesser schools that are phenomenal schools also. … 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,” Trump said.

“And that includes junior colleges, too. Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country,” he continued.

Lomez tells co-host Christopher Rufo that he believes Trump is compromising with Big Tech, noting that the industry says “they’re dependent on these H-1Bs to sort of continue the business model that they currently have.”

While this is “actually probably true,” he’s not pleased with Trump helping this industry in this way.

“It is not therefore incumbent on the United States people and on President Trump to allow them to continue these abusive practices with regards to H-1B. So while that might be their business model, it ought not to be their business model, and we may have to take some coercive action so that they change their business model,” Lomez says.

However, he also believes that what President Trump has said regarding H1-Bs is being taken "way out of proportion.”

“It is a statement on a news show that is not necessarily reflected in what is actually happening from a policy point of view,” Lomez says.

“By this point, it sort of surprises me that people don’t understand the way he speaks publicly is not always indicative of his policy prescriptions,” he adds.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.