President Donald Trump split with immigration hawks by defending Chinese students in the U.S. while also softening on Chinese-owned farmland \u2014 creating friction inside MAGA and unexpected overlap with moderate Democrats.<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity asked Trump in a recent interview from Beijing about concerns surrounding Chinese nationals attending school in the U.S. and China-linked entities purchasing farmland, including in sensitive areas like near a North Dakota military base<\/a> that raised eyebrows earlier this decade.<\/p>\n Republicans have long warned that Chinese student visa programs could expose U.S. research and state secrets to the Chinese Communist Party, while GOP officials like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> and Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer<\/a> have pushed for tougher restrictions on Chinese ownership of American farmland.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop; you want to see farmers lose a lot of money just take that out of the market. But they’ve had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it,” Trump said.<\/p>\n SENATORS RICKETTS, FETTERMAN UNITE AGAINST CHINA’S QUIET INVASION OF US FARMLAND<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Trump also defended allowing Chinese students to study<\/a> in the U.S., calling them “good students” and arguing banning them would unnecessarily inflame tensions with Beijing.<\/p>\n “I frankly think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here,” Trump said, while admitting that it “doesn\u2019t sound like a very conservative position \u2013 and I\u2019m a conservative\u2026 commonsense guy. I think MAGA is \u2018common sense\u2019,” he said.<\/p>\n The comments triggered backlash from the right wing<\/a> of the MAGA movement, with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene disputing, “No \u2014 that\u2019s not commonsense.”<\/p>\n “Trump says it\u2019s insulting to tell China their students can\u2019t go to our universities, imagine being an American student and receiving a rejection letter while 500,000 Chinese students get in,” Greene said, according to the left-wing New Republic<\/a>. “And no \u2013 it\u2019s not OK for China to buy our farmland.”<\/p>\n Some Democrats, however, appeared heartened by Trump\u2019s more moderate stance on a major sticking point in the immigration field.<\/p>\n Fox News Digital reached out to top Democrats on the moderate New Democrat Coalition\u2019s Border Security<\/a> Working Group.<\/p>\n Chairman Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico<\/a> told Fox News Digital that while he disagrees with Trump “on a lot” regarding immigration enforcement, he will continue to support efforts to bring new blood into the American economy.<\/p>\n “I have long supported building America\u2019s workforce by encouraging the best and brightest across the world to come study in the U.S. and build their careers and families here,” said Vasquez.<\/p>\n “Congress should expand more legal pathways for students to stay here and start businesses, grow the American economy, and help our country fill critical needs in key industries like healthcare, manufacturing<\/a>, quantum, AI, and engineering.”\u00a0<\/p>\n A Vasquez spokesperson added that the lawmaker, however, agrees with conservatives on one point where Trump differed \u2014 that Chinese nationals should not be permitted to purchase U.S. farmland.<\/p>\n “Food security is national security<\/a>,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Speaking to Hannity, Trump added: “I could tell [Xi], I don’t want any students, it\u2019s a very insulting thing to say to a country. They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China.”<\/p>\n Trump argued that without the influx of Chinese students, middling and lower-tier universities would begin dying on the vine financially.<\/p>\n Lora Ries<\/a>, former counsel for the House Judiciary Committee\u2019s immigration subcommittee and a 30-year policy expert now with the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that universities have grown too dependent on foreign students because they often pay “full freight” \u2014 and made the case for scrutinizing the education system rather than keeping it propped up with foreign tuition.<\/p>\n TRUMP CLAIMS GOP ‘VERY OPEN’ TO KEEPING ‘DREAMERS’ IN US, TAKES SHOT AT ‘VERY DIFFICULT’ DEMS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “It is no longer a level playing field for American students to get into these universities. We also know many of these universities are producing degrees that don’t have a great return on investment: gender studies, et cetera. So why on earth do we want to keep universities that depend on those sorts of degrees afloat?” Ries said.<\/p>\n “We shouldn’t justify continuing to bring in high levels of foreign students to keep so many universities in business when the Big-Ed model is absolutely upside-down.”<\/p>\n According to Ries, Chinese and other foreign student blocs exacerbate the difficulty American students face getting into colleges \u2014 while native students are also not finding meaningful jobs after graduation.<\/p>\n Ries said that the issue is “right up Trump\u2019s alley,” but not in the way the president posited on “Hannity.” She said Trump could shake up “Big-Ed” by incentivizing quality degrees and disincentivizing ones that leave American graduates occupationally stranded.<\/p>\n FOREIGN STUDENTS WHO HATE AMERICA DON’T DESERVE VISAS \u2014 AND WE HAVE TOOLS TO STOP THEM<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n When it comes to the adage about jobs American\u2019s supposedly won\u2019t do, she pointed to the medical field, which has seen an influx in foreign students.<\/p>\n “You can’t say medicine is a job that Americans won’t do, so what’s going on?” she said.<\/p>\n She also noted that Chinese nationals cannot come to live in America without the knowledge of \u2014 and often information-sharing with \u2014 the CCP, which itself poses a risk.<\/p>\n “Also, Chairman Xi can say, well, America is in decline, as he just did in this summit.”<\/p>\n When asked for comment, a White House spokesperson<\/a> directed Fox News Digital to the president\u2019s remarks to Hannity.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s comments set up a new potential divergence between presidential policy and conservative politics<\/a> among some of his current and former most ardent supporters, including Greene.<\/p>\n It also, however, potentially opens up a rare immigration dialogue with Democrats like Vasquez and his coalition of moderates, who have been trying to advance their own fixes to the broken system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump split with immigration hawks by defending Chinese students in the U.S. while also softening on Chinese-owned farmland \u2014 creating friction inside MAGA and unexpected overlap with moderate Democrats. Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity asked Trump in a recent interview from Beijing about concerns surrounding Chinese nationals attending school in the U.S. and China-linked … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}