Trump has wanted to change immigration (and refugee) policy since he was sworn into office. He wants a "merit-based" immigration policy. That's code-speak for rich and white.
He wasn't able to get Congress to do his bidding, so now he is changing the rules himself. His new immigration rules make it harder for the poor and brown-skinned people to enter the U.S. -- or to stay even after they have been allowed to enter. The new policy will go into effect on October 15th.
Understand this. These new rules apply to legal immigrants (not the undocumented, who he has always wanted to block and deport).
Here's what Colby Itkowitz and Felicia Sommez wrote about the new policy (as introduced by Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) in The Washington Post:
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Tuesday that the poem etched on the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to America should include a line qualifying that they be able to “stand on their own two feet.” Cuccinelli made the comments while defending the Trump administration’s announcement Monday that the government would consider an immigrant’s use of social safety net programs, like Medicaid or food stamps, when deciding their permanent legal status. The famous words on the pedestal of the State of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” were written by Emma Lazarus in 1883. In recent years, it’s taken on new meaning as a rallying cry against President Trump’s immigration policies. Cuccinelli, during an interview with NPR, argued it’s the “American tradition” that immigrants welcomed into the country be those who are “self-sufficient, can pull themselves up from their bootstraps.” “Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus’s words etched on the Statue of Liberty, ‘Give me your tired, give me your poor,’ are also a part of the American ethos?” NPR’s Rachel Martin asked Cuccinelli. “They certainly are: ‘Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,’ ” Cuccinelli said. . . . Later Tuesday, in an interview on CNN, Cuccinelli was asked to clarify his remarks. He said he “wasn’t writing poetry” and accused anchor Erin Burnett of “twisting this like everybody else on the left has done all day today.” “Wretched, poor refuse. Right?” Burnett said, referring to Lazarus’s poem. “That’s what the poem says America’s supposed to stand for. So, what do you think America stands for?” Cuccinelli responded by pointing to the historical context of the poem. “Well, of course, that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class,” he said.
