Trump vs. Immigration, Full-Spectrum Approach

August 12, 2025

Posted in: Democracy

While all eyes are on what will someday soon be a battle royale in the Supreme Court over whether or not Trump’s plan to do away with birthright citizenship is constitutional, he has elsewhere taken a full-spectrum approach to the immigration problem. Most of the changes now in play will engender court challenges, and some may require legislation, but they show Trump is receiving thorough, detailed advice on immigration, and moving where he can.

The first proposed change is to toughen up the civics test immigrants must pass in order to become U.S. citizens (there are also plans to change the required English exam.) Joseph Edlow, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) said the civics test was “not very difficult,” and allowed immigrants to easily memorize the questions and answers. He argued this was not really “comporting with the spirit of the law.” He said the test must reflect assimilation expectations. The test was made up of largely random questions and was non-standardized until 2008, when the George W. Bush administration introduced a basic civics test requiring applicants to correctly answer six out of 10 questions. During Trump 1.0 the number of possible questions was raised to 128, and the number of correct answers to 12 out of 20, before the Biden administration switched it back in March 2021 to the current, easier, format.

The current actual list of 100 potential questions, and answers, is online to memorize. The test is oral, and the USCIS Officer will ask the applicant no more than 10 of the 100 civics questions; those age 65 and above with significant time in the U.S. face a smaller battery of questions and can do the civics test in their native language. All other applicants must answer six out of 10 questions correctly to pass. If they fail, they can retake the test one more time. Most TAC readers would hopefully pass without much preparation, based on their 8th grade U.S. government high school class, so give it a try. If you need a refresher, USCIS has what looks just like an 8th grade U.S. government high school textbook online. All in all, it is a test worth toughening up for immigrants when the prize for getting things right is American citizenship.

The next potential change has to do with the infamous H1-B, the skilled worker visa that everyone agrees we need but no one can agree how it should be administered. The latest initiative out of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security would be to eliminate the current lottery system. At present Congress allows only 85,000 H1-B visas to be issued a year, a number dramatically below actual need/demand. Applications are tossed into a drum and 85k are chosen at random for further processing. This puts the British Nobel prize winning quantum physicist on par with the fake credentials of the Indian web designer. DHS is hoping to replace this lottery with a “weighted selection process” of some kind. The Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan think tank, argues the economic value of the visa program to the U.S. could be increased 88 percent if applicants were evaluated based on seniority or salary, and the lottery done away with for good. A researcher at the Economic Innovation Group said “Giving away these visas randomly is an enormous, missed opportunity to attract truly scarce talent that would benefit American businesses and communities.”

USCIS is revisiting the public charge rule, which bars green cards for applicants likely to take public assistance. The rule has existed since Ellis Island days but was more strictly interpreted during Trump 1.0 to include non-cash benefits like Medicaid or housing aid. The Biden administration returned to guidance that did not take non-cash benefits into account.

Foreign students have already received significant attention from the Trump administration, with visas cut off or reduced to certain American universities alongside renewed scrutiny for those applicants granted visas for elsewhere. Students’ social media, for example, is being scanned when they apply for a visa. In Niger, all visa processing has been suspended in part due to a 27 percent overstay rate among students. Foreign students in the U.S. have found themselves more often subject to deportation, such as Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist detained in March 2025.

The next step is Trump’s Justice Department has launched legal challenges in states which allow undocumented, illegal alien college students to pay the tuition rate reserved for in-state residents. That price can often be half of what out-of-state American students or legal foreign students are responsible for. There are about 408,000 undocumented students in U.S. colleges. The Justice Department argues these tuition laws unfairly offer a benefit to foreigners unavailable to U.S. citizens and legal residents and wants it stopped. Attorney General Pam Bondi said “The Justice Department will relentlessly fight to vindicate federal law and ensure that U.S. citizens are not treated like second-class citizens anywhere in the country.” Texas has already dropped the favorable treatment of illegal alien students on its own. Following Texas, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla) while serving in the state legislature, introduced a Florida bill that ended the tuition break in his state.

Also on the chopping block are favorable tuition policies for the 119,000 illegal alien students protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, which encouraged in-state tuition for these students. Scholarships available exclusively to DACA students (i.e., not available to American citizens) are being looked at as discriminatory and thus unconstitutional.

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.