WASHINGTON—On the campaign trail, Donald Trump routinely promises he will end illegal immigration. Behind the scenes, his closest advisers and allies are also drawing up plans that would restrict many forms of legal immigration, some of which could affect the ability of businesses to hire foreign workers .
Outside advisers including Stephen Miller , the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda when he was in the White House, and such groups as the America First Policy Institute have been preparing executive orders, regulations and memos for a future homeland security secretary to sign that would narrow legal ways to migrate. That is according to interviews with a dozen former Trump administration officials, a review of public plans published by the campaign, and outside groups aligned with the campaign.
While public attention centers on the hot-button topic of illegal migration, how Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, approach lesser-known legal-immigration issues could have a broad impact, from Americans looking to bring foreign family members into the country to businesses that rely on visas to fill jobs ranging from software engineering to seasonal positions at theme parks.
The plans feature a return of some controversial policies from Trump’s first term. Included are a ban on travel to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries, a halt on refugee resettlement from overseas, and the public charge rule, a policy seeking to block immigrants who are low-income, disabled or speak limited English, so those people wouldn’t eventually use public benefits.
Last time around, Trump’s team struggled to fully implement most of its immigration policies because they weren’t issued properly, allowing them to be toppled by lawsuits from Democratic states and immigration-advocacy groups.
“They are explicitly more prepared this time around,” said Kristie De Peña , senior vice president for policy at the Niskanen Center, a think tank in Washington with libertarian roots that supports immigration. De Peña is one of several analysts tracking the emerging plans by parsing policy papers, social-media posts and public statements.
The plans haven’t taken on the same level of urgency that Trump has placed on controlling illegal immigration or enacting mass deportations. And some of the steps could face pushback from newfound allies in the business and tech community, including Elon Musk . The billionaire has repeatedly championed legal immigration but said illegal migration should be reduced.
Ideas being explored include a pause in accepting new applications for categories of immigration that currently have large backlogs. They range from asylum to requests for employment-based green cards for Indian technology workers, leaving those immigrants out of legal options.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to several requests for an interview or clarification of his positions for this article. A campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt , said in an emailed statement, “President Trump has repeatedly said that he supports legal immigration and wants as many people to come into the country, as long as they come LEGALLY.”
The Biden administration reversed many of Trump’s restrictions on legal immigration, though it also made moves that have angered business groups, including the placement of new requirements on farmers and other seasonal employers looking to hire foreign workers.
The philosophy underlying Trump advisers’ opposition to legal immigration—which Trump himself has also articulated—is that immigrants are often willing to accept lower wages for jobs that, if they paid more, Americans would take on.
That argument has taken on urgency this election as Trump has sought to make the case that immigrants, no matter how they entered the country, are also driving up the cost of living, including for housing and car insurance.
Some, including Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have argued that too much immigration, no matter the source, can harm the fabric of American society.
“There’s a difference between having 500,000 or a million newcomers a year or 10 million or 30 million or 50 million a year,” Vance said in an April interview with The Wall Street Journal. “And I think that we clearly are reaching a point where we just can’t absorb the pace of immigration in this country.”
Some business groups are wary of restricting access to immigrant workers. “We do have some concern over the rhetoric that immigrants are taking jobs from American workers,” said Stephanie Martz , general counsel of the National Retail Federation. “We have very, very low unemployment right now. We have wages going up.”
Surveys show that while most Americans put a priority on reducing illegal immigration, most also still favor the ability of immigrants to come in legally.
A Journal poll conducted in October showed that 33% of respondents said they favor reducing legal immigration, while 36% would keep it at current levels and 23% would increase it.
Trump himself has occasionally differentiated between illegal and legal immigration, saying at a Univision town hall in October that “we want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally.” He made similar comments when he was running for president during the 2016 campaign.
He also took people by surprise when he suggested on a tech podcast this summer that he would support issuing an automatic green card to every international student who earns a college diploma in the U.S.—comments his campaign later walked back.
Many of Trump’s proponents and detractors alike say that isn’t how he governed.
In 2017, he held an event at the White House to honor the introduction of a bill known as the Raise Act, which would have cut legal immigration levels roughly in half and ended the system allowing U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents and siblings for green cards, which conservatives refer to as “chain migration.” The bill failed to advance through Congress.
And in 2020, with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump banned the entry of immigrants on a range of temporary and permanent work-based visas, including the H-1B for highly skilled foreign professionals, to prevent them from competing with Americans for jobs at a time of economic stress from the pandemic.
Overall, an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, a pro-immigration think tank, found that Trump’s administration adopted 52 policies to restrict access to visas and green cards for highly skilled workers, and didn’t put in place any policies to ease their access.
Miller, 39 years old, is expected to serve in a top government role if Trump is re-elected, according to people familiar with Trump’s plans. He has repeatedly argued that immigrants entering the country legally also pose a threat.
“A demonstration of why the immigration discussion cannot simply be cleaved into legal/illegal,” he posted to X early this year. “Refugee resettlement is ‘legal.’ Chain migration is ‘legal.’ Diversity lottery is ‘legal.’ Islamist green card migration is ‘legal.’ And it’s why we need the Trump Travel Ban back now.”
During Trump’s first term, Miller found administrative ways to slow legal immigration by, for example, adding new requirements on approving visa applications that slowed processing and drove up denial rates.
The Trump administration occasionally pursued policies that ran against Miller’s beliefs, such as allowing farmers and landscapers to use more visas to hire seasonal foreign workers. And Miller pushed for numerous policies that never became reality, including the elimination of a program that allows international students who earn STEM degrees in the U.S. to work for up to three years in the country on their student visas.
In those cases, Miller was blocked by more business-minded members of the administration, notably Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner . Though Kushner isn’t likely to enter a second Trump administration, allies of Miller worry that he will face similar opposition from Trump’s newfound supporters in Silicon Valley, such as Musk, who himself moved to the U.S. on an H-1B visa. He uses the program at his companies including Tesla and SpaceX.
“You might end up seeing power struggles inside the White House,” said Mark Krikorian , president of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group favoring immigration restrictions that helped staff Trump’s first term.
Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com
