^{Chapman’s News & Ideas} President Trump, Please Staple (Conditional) Green Cards to Graduate Degrees

The following article was authored by our former colleague, Yuri Mamchur, who served as the Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Discovery Institute.

In June 2024, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said: "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. That includes junior colleges, too."

Trump's comments, which were an entry in the ongoing and recently intensified debate on the right about immigration, tapped into a truth. Our immigration system has welcomed gang members and awarded them housing and health care. And yet it forces some of the brightest minds that our schools and scholarships have nurtured to jump through numerous hoops before they can stay and work in the country — and sometimes, it just deports them.

I am a German-born, Russian-speaking naturalized U.S. citizen with two Vanderbilt graduate degrees, state and federal bar admissions, and national security clearance. However, it took me $100,000 and 13 years (from 1999 to 2012) to obtain a green card. I finally became an American in 2019.

In 2008, at a routine renewal appointment for my H-1B (temporary, specialized worker) visa, I encountered an angry interview officer who was evidently having a bad day. Were it not for my work endorsements by leading members of Congress, my American journey would have ended right there, perhaps because this gentleman spilled coffee on his favorite shirt or argued with his wife that morning.