Trump, the Immigration Waffler

President Donald Trump is here, he’s there, he’s everywhere. Observers note that the president is moving with dizzying speed---balancing immigration Executive Orders, tariffs, China, Russia, the Ukraine---as he fends off an unprecedented total of injunctions against his actions. The whirlwind of activity is hard to keep up with. But President Trump’s unscripted immigration comments have caused some of his supporters to question whether he is truly the restrictionist he professes to be or if, in his heart of hearts, he’s an expansionist.

President Trump surely opposes illegal immigration and has done an outstanding job of securing the border and accelerating interior enforcement, not only when compared to the Biden administration but historically. A Department of Homeland Security post on X: “February was the lowest month in recorded history for encounters at our border.” DHS data also shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 11,791 interior arrests from Jan. 20 to Feb. 8, compared to 4,969 during the same period in 2024, a 137% increase. A number of high-profile raids in sanctuary cities like Boston have helped restore a sense of security in local communities.

Border security and interior enforcement were, along with inflation, President Trump’s major campaign issues. But finishing the border wall and removing criminal aliens are the obvious steps; failure to deliver on those promises would be catastrophic to the GOP in the 2026 mid-terms. In truth, President Trump has only a superficial understanding of legal immigration and the pitfalls that the dozens of non-immigrant employment-based visas have on both white- and blue-collar U.S. workers and their wages. The visas either displace American workers or depress their incomes. The more cheap-labor visas issued to foreign nationals, the fewer job opportunities for Americans.

As an indication of what may be President Trump’s true expansionist leanings, at least as they apply to labor, consider this exchange which he had with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at an April 10 cabinet meeting. The brief conversation between President Trump and Noem set off alarm bells among the MAGA faithful. The president, talking about self-deporting, said if that illegal aliens depart “in a nice way,” they’ll be permitted to re-enter legally. Then the discussion turned to farmers, hotel workers and the “various, various…places where they need the labor,” wherein the president proposed a similarly forgiving approach to re-entry.

Perhaps President Trump was influenced by his former Vice President Mike Pence’s immigration musings. In 2006, then-Congressman Pence floated the "touchback" policy that would require all illegal immigrants to return to their native countries but then, through a new guest-worker program — within as quickly as a week — return to their places of employment in the U.S. Pence’s bad idea went nowhere. Or maybe President Trump is taking his cues from cost-cutting DOGE director Elon Musk who would like an unlimited pipeline of H-1B visa workers. A Musk X post confirmed his enthusiasm for twice the 85,000 H-1B visas issued annually. Musk: “No, we need more like double that number yesterday.”

Most likely, however, is that the president is, at least as it pertains to labor, an immigration expansionist. The Economic Policy Institute’s Director of Immigration, Daniel Costa wrote that then-presumptive 2016 GOP nominee Donald Trump’s companies have relied heavily on H-2B temporary workers at his Mar-a-Lago resort and golf clubs. Trump’s companies “requested hundreds of [H-2B] visas in recent years claiming they were unable to find Americans willing to do even the most basic tasks,” even though ample evidence exists that local workers were available. At Mar-a-Lago, more than 500 visas were applied for between 2010 and 2016, while “nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired. Trump’s response to the New York Times, which also published the story, was, “The only reason [the job applicants] wouldn’t get a callback is that they weren’t qualified, for some reason. There are very few qualified people during the high season in the area,” a false narrative that a Silicon Valley executive could have uttered. Costa concluded that the lack of qualified candidates runs counter to the facts because H-2B jobs are almost all unskilled which require neither training nor experience.

President Trump must tread carefully to assure that the 2028 GOP presidential nominee isn’t saddled with an excess of underemployed or unemployed Americans. Expanding the labor force with low-skilled employees that taxpayers often subsidize with affirmative benefits is not a winning platform. On the other hand, getting rid of unnecessary employment visas like the H-2B that competes with American workers will be a hit with voters.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy Analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org