Donald Trump’s campaign is now days into pushing a baseless conspiracy about immigrants stealing pets for food. But it was only weeks ago that he said he would “let a lot of people come in” for tech and farming jobs if he is elected president.
The contrast between the messages, and his own record as president, has been confusing for even some of his supporters in Congress.
“We’re going to let a lot of people come in,” Trump said at a press conference in New Jersey in August. “Especially with AI coming and all the different things, and the farmers need, everybody needs, but we’re going to make sure they’re not murderers and drug dealers.”
Trump has made vilifying immigrants — who he keeps claiming are “taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics” — a central theme of his campaign. He supported legislation that would have restricted legal immigration.
“I’m a little surprised to be honest,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, who has co-sponsored legislation that would halve the current level of legal migration. “We need more people because of AI? I don’t know about that.”
Republicans have largely adopted Trump’s deportation-centric view of immigration — a sharp departure from the Paul Ryan-era of conservative policies. With the Trump campaign back to its more familiar anti-immigration messaging, Republican lawmakers find themselves navigating what a second-term Trump would actually call for.
“There have been some conflicting signals, I think it’s safe to say, from the campaign,” Hawley said. “So it’s not 100% clear to me what the plans are, if there are plans, but I’m very intently watching that space.”
“I’m not 100% sure what he means,” Rep. Chip Roy said. “We already have legal programs to let in people.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Many Republicans, as they have become accustomed to doing for Trump’s policy-adjacent comments over the years, tried to find a way to explain him.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Trump’s been all for opening the gates for agricultural and tech workers all along.
“That’s basically what his proposed plan was,” Crenshaw said Wednesday. “Nobody actually looks at his actions, and he’s not very good at explaining himself, clearly. So people like me have to do it for him.”
Sen. Thom Tillis said the same.
“The H-1B visa worker is not a path to citizenship; that’s a work visa,” Tillis said. “He had Jared [Kushner], I think it was Jared, over here talking about that when he was in office. So he hasn’t really changed his tune on that subject.”
H-1B visas are designed for temporary workers who are educated. They don’t provide a path to citizenship but allow U.S. businesses to bring in workers from other countries.
Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors low levels of immigration, also argued Trump is not actually an immigration restrictionist and that he falls into the Republican camp of “legal good, illegal bad.”
“That is the default Republican politician dodge on immigration. It’s a way of making sure The New York Times doesn’t call them names,” Krikorian said. “Before COVID, when the economy was firing on all cylinders, he actually said several times publicly that we need more immigration.”
Krikorian said Trump is a businessman, and “those are the people that he talks to.” Trump’s own businesses have used foreign labor.
During his presidency, Trump’s administration decreased the levels of legal immigration overall and supported measures to cut legal migration in half, even before the pandemic. Rates of denials in the highly skilled H-1B category went up.
During the pandemic, the administration suspended the visa program for this category, and later, his administration announced cuts to the number of workers they would allow under those visas. Some of his administration’s policies did expand the number of people allowed into the country, such as increasing the cap on temporary, seasonal worker visas. Seasonal worker visas, called H-2Bs, also provide no path to citizenship but allow U.S. companies to bring in foreign workers for non-agriculture-related jobs. The Trump administration also increased the number of temporary work visas for farmworkers, and during the pandemic, exempted them from restrictions applied to other categories.
Other Republicans just said they trusted Trump on all this, even if they’re not quite sure what he’s getting at.
“I’m not speaking for President Trump, but I do believe that President Trump listens to the people, and the people in these industries are speaking at this level, saying, ‘Hey, look, we’re really hurting here,’” Rep. Morgan Luttrell said.
“I’m all for legal immigration, merit-based, but I think we need to ensure that Americans are the priority when it comes to jobs, and I think that the president’s there absolutely with that,” Rep. Andrew Clyde said. “We’re gonna throw out all the illegals, so we’ll probably have room.”
Trump’s current campaign platform cites promoting “merit”-based immigration but does not exactly make it seem like the administration will be letting “a lot of people come in,” particularly for agricultural workers, who are considered “low skill.” That contrasts with his record, where more restrictions were placed on temporary visas for highly educated workers while other categories were expanded.
Trump’s official “Agenda 47” pledges to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history” and specifically says legal migration will be “merit-based” and put “American workers first!”
Project 2025, a transition framework created by conservative groups to help establish policy goals for a potential Trump presidency, goes much further. It includes a proposal to reform temporary work visas “into an elite mechanism exclusively to bring in the ‘best and brightest’ at the highest wages.”
The Trump campaign has taken steps to distance itself from Project 2025, though most of the immigration-relevant chapters were written by former Trump appointee Ken Cuccinelli.
Earlier this year, the Trump campaign expressed support for offering visas to highly skilled foreign workers who attended college in the U.S. But a significant wing of his party, including his pick for vice president, Sen. JD Vance, argues immigrant labor harms American workers and suppresses wages.
While there’s debate about what exactly Trump believes about immigration, Vance and others who had control of immigration policy in Trump’s first term, like Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser and White House director of speechwriting, are restrictionists. That’s partly why those who favor low levels of immigration, like Krikorian, aren’t fretting about his comments.
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.