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    Trump Says He Would Give Green Cards to Foreign College Students After Graduation

    Donald J. Trump said he would push for a program that would automatically give green cards to foreign college students in America after they graduate, a reversal from restrictions he enacted as president on immigration by high-skilled workers and students to the United States.Appearing with the host David Sacks, a Silicon Valley investor who backs the former president’s 2024 campaign, on a podcast that aired Thursday, Mr. Trump repeated his frequent criticism of high levels of immigration as an “invasion of our country.” He was then pressed by Jason Calacanis, another investor who hosts the podcast, to “promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.”“I do promise, but I happen to agree,” Mr. Trump said, adding “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, and that includes junior colleges.”Mr. Trump suggested that he had wanted to enact such a policy while in office but “then we had to solve the Covid problem.” The Trump administration invoked the pandemic to enact many of the immigration restrictions that officials had wanted to put in place earlier in Mr. Trump’s term.Mr. Trump also lamented “stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t — they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places. And they become multibillionaires.” Mr. Trump’s comments stood in contrast to the immigration policy he adopted while in office and were a direct overture to wealthy business leaders whom he is courting as donors and supporters of his campaign. Mr. Sacks hosted a fund-raiser this month for the former president in San Francisco, the beating heart of the liberal tech industry, that raised about $12 million for Mr. Trump’s campaign.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens

    Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan.President Biden on Tuesday will announce sweeping new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens, officials familiar with the plan said.Mr. Biden will detail the policy at the White House on Tuesday while marking the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects people who came to the United States as children from deportation, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy that had not been formally announced.Under the policy, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship. Officials briefed on the conversations said it could affect up to 500,000 undocumented spouses, although the exact scale of the program remained unclear.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally — rather than arriving in the country with a visa — must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status.Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Prince Harry Now Officially Resident in U.S., Documents Show

    For years, Harry and his wife, Meghan, have considered California home. This week, he updated his residency in a corporate filing.The document filed on Wednesday at Britain’s corporate registrar, Companies House, was just a few lines long. But its purpose was to formally update the country of residency for one “Prince Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex” — otherwise known as Prince Harry.For years, Harry and his American wife, Meghan, have considered California home. The document updated the residency of the British royal to the United States for official paperwork for his business Travalyst Limited, a nonprofit sustainable travel initiative.The paperwork was just a bureaucratic formality. But it underscores just how far Harry, 39, has come from his days as a central member of the royal family in the country of his birth, to a very different life with his wife and children in California. It also comes at a time of turmoil for the House of Windsor.Harry and Meghan moved to Montecito, Calif., after stepping back from royal duties in 2020, amid a rift with the royal family.Prince Harry said in February that he had considered becoming a U.S. citizen, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “It’s a thought that has crossed my mind but it’s not a high priority for me right now.”But there had been little in the way of official confirmation of Harry’s residency status until this week. The filing indicates the change of residency dates to June 29, 2023, the day that Buckingham Palace confirmed the couple had vacated Frogmore Cottage, their British home. Queen Elizabeth II had offered the home to the couple when they were married in 2018.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    DeSantis Says He Would Cancel Student Visas of Hamas Sympathizers

    At a G.O.P. candidate showcase in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his rivals repeatedly sought to one-up one another on support for Israel.In a competition of hawkish messages on Israel, Ron DeSantis pledged on Friday night to revoke the student visas of Hamas sympathizers if elected president, while Tim Scott said he would withhold Pell grants from universities that failed to stamp out antisemitism.At an Iowa showcase featuring most of the top Republican presidential contenders, the Florida governor and the South Carolina senator engaged in one-upmanship about who would best support Israel, America’s closest Middle East ally.With their focus on students and academic institutions, they repackaged a traditional line of attack for Republicans: that liberal college campuses foster “woke” extremism, which they said was now taking the form of anti-Israel expressions.“You see students demonstrating in our country in favor of Hamas,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Remember, some of them are foreigners.”Mr. DeSantis then warned that if he became president, “I’m canceling your visa and I’m sending you home.”His remarks, during a tailgate at a construction plant in Iowa City, echoed recent talking points of former President Donald J. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week urging him to rescind the visas of “Hamas sympathizers.”Mr. Trump, who did not attend the event, had issued a similar pledge to expel student sympathizers of Hamas.Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, said he had sponsored a bill to deny Pell grants to colleges that failed to stamp out antisemitism.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Scott, who has been polling in the low single digits, said that he had already sponsored a bill — which he would sign if elected president — that would deny Pell grants to colleges and universities that shirk responsibility for condemning support for terrorist groups.By their inaction, he said, they were sending a message that “it’s OK to be anti-Israel.” He continued, “I say no.”At a town hall earlier on Friday in Cedar Rapids, Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, delivered a similar warning and accused some colleges and universities of promoting violence.“We have got to start connecting their government funding with how they manage hate,” she said. “Because when you do that, you are threatening someone’s life when you do that. That’s not freedom of speech.”Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, said Israel should wipe out Hamas.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMs. Haley, who has been sparring with Mr. DeSantis over the Israel-Hamas conflict as she threatens to eclipse him in some polls, also spoke at the showcase on Friday night. The event was hosted by Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive district in Iowa. The state holds its first-in-the-nation presidential caucus in mid-January.At the event, Ms. Haley called for Israel to wipe out Hamas, a militant group backed by Iran.“Stop acting like it’s Sept. 10,” she said.But Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, struck a contrast with his G.O.P. rivals, calling for restraint toward an imminent ground invasion by Israel in Gaza. He said that Israel should heed the lessons of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.“To what end?” he said.Mr. Scott took the opposite view.”I am sick and tired of people saying to Israel, ‘Settle down,’” he said.Jazmine Ulloa More

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    There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote

    This essay is part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment. Read more about this project in a note from Ezekiel Kweku, Opinion’s politics editor.

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    Washingtonians love to complain about taxation without representation. But for me and my fellow noncitizens, it is a fact of political life that we submit to unquestioningly year after year, primary after primary, presidential election after presidential election. Nearly 15 million people living legally in the United States, most of whom contribute as much as any natural-born American to this country’s civic, cultural and economic life, don’t have a say in matters of politics and policy because we — resident foreign nationals, or “aliens” as we are sometimes called — cannot vote.Considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision undermining voting rights, and Republicans’ efforts to suppress, redistrict and manipulate their way to electoral security, it’s time for Democrats to radically expand the electorate. Proposing federal legislation to give millions of young people and essential workers a clear road to citizenship is a good start. But there’s another measure that lawmakers both in Washington and state capitals should put in place: lifting voting restrictions on legal residents who aren’t citizens — people with green cards, people here on work visas, and those who arrived in the country as children and are still waiting for permanent papers.Expanding the franchise in this way would give American democracy new life, restore immigrants’ trust in government and send a powerful message of inclusion to the rest of the world.It’s easy to assume that restricting the franchise to citizens is an age-old, nonnegotiable fact. But it’s actually a relatively recent convention and a political choice. Early in the United States’ history, voting was a function not of national citizenship but of gender, race and class. As a result, white male landowners of all nationalities were encouraged to play an active role in shaping American democracy, while women and poor, Indigenous and enslaved people could not. That wholesale discrimination is unquestionably worse than excluding resident foreigners from the polls, but the point is that history shows how readily voting laws can be altered — and that restrictive ones tend not to age well.Another misconception is that citizen voting rights have always been the prerogative of the federal government. In fact, states have largely decided who had a say in local, state and national elections. Arkansas was the last state to eliminate noncitizen voting in 1926, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Congress doubled down with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which made voting in federal elections while foreign — already not permitted because of state-level rules — a criminal, and deportable, offense. (This means that congressional Democrats working on immigration and election reform can reverse the 1996 sanctions the same way they voted them in.)The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires. The United States already has plenty of institutions that account for noncitizens: The census aims to reach all residents because it believes everyone, even aliens, matters. Corporations enjoy free speech and legal personhood — and they’re not even people. Would it be such a stretch to give a noncitizen resident a say in who gets elected to their state legislature, Congress or the White House?What’s more, allowing noncitizens to vote in federal, state and municipal elections would help revitalize American democracy at a time when enthusiasm and trust are lacking. While 2020 was considered a “high turnout” election, only about 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Compare that to Germany, where turnout was 76 percent in the last general election.Democrats are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this change — at least at first. But it could have interesting ripple effects: Elected Republicans might be induced to appeal to a more diverse constituency, or perhaps to enthuse their constituents so deeply that they too start to vote in greater numbers.It’s also just good civics: Allowing people to vote gives them even more of a sense of investment in their towns, cities, communities and country. There’s a detachment that comes with not being able to vote in the place where you live. Concerns about mixed loyalties, meanwhile, are misplaced. The United States not only allows dual citizenship but also allows dual citizens to vote — and from abroad. Is there any reason to think resident foreigners should be less represented?Voting is, in a sense, a reward for becoming an American. But in truth, it’s often much harder to get a visa or green card than to then become a naturalized citizen. It took me 15 years and over $10,000 in legal fees (not to mention the cost of college) to obtain permanent residency. The citizenship test and oath feel comparatively like a piece of cake.It shouldn’t be this onerous to emigrate. But given that it is, it would make much more sense to make residents provide proof of voter registration as a requirement for naturalization, rather than the other way around. We will have more than “earned” it. And what better way to learn about American life than to play an active role in deciding its elections?In the absence of federal- or state-level action, local lawmakers are already free let noncitizens decide on things like garbage pickup, parking rules and potholes. Some do. Since 1992, Takoma Park, Md., has allowed all residents to vote, regardless of their citizenship. Nine additional Maryland towns, as well as districts in Vermont and Massachusetts, have voted to re-enfranchise noncitizens. The cities of Chicago, Washington and Portland are also considering the idea, and a bill that would give New York City’s authorized immigrants voting rights has a new supermajority in the City Council.I’ve lived in New York since 2004, but haven’t once had a chance to cast a ballot here. Last fall, I grew so frustrated that I started mailing ballots to my hometown in Switzerland. But voting in a place I haven’t lived in since I was a minor makes about as little sense as not voting in the city where I’ve lived my entire adult life.I’m looking forward to City Council giving me, and the other million or so friendly aliens living here, the right to vote for New York’s officials. But we should be able to vote for our representatives in Washington, too. I hope that Democrats seize their chance, and realize the power and the enthusiasm of their potential constituents. They — and we — will not regret it.Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (@atossaaraxia) is the author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming Global Citizen.” She is working on a second book about weird jurisdictions.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.hed More