Bannon pushes back on Trump’s green cards for graduates idea

Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is pushing back on former President Trump’s idea to give green cards to international students who graduate from U.S. colleges.

Bannon, an ally of Trump’s and a podcaster, argued strongly against the immigration idea on Friday, saying the student’s exit visa should be clipped to their diploma.

“People by and large want to live back where they come from or where their folks are and what their culture and society is,” Bannon said in comments highlighted by Mediaite. “Yes, let’s take them in on a selective basis, train them up, let the root for college football and get all that. You know, you look in the college football stands, the diversity, it’s fabulous, but then it’s time to go back home.”  

Bannon argued that international students should go and make their home country “great again” upon graduating from higher learning institutions in the U.S.

“Work for your country and make [it] great again. That is the way we go as nations of the earth,” he said.

In a Thursday appearance on the “All-In” podcast, Trump said he thinks college graduates should automatically get a green card to the United States as part of their diploma “to be able to say in this country.”

The idea was a change of tone for the former president, who rode to office during his first campaign on promises to build a wall at the country’s southern border.

His words seem to mirror language from former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign, during which she said certain STEM and PhD graduates should receive green cards.

Bannon tied the green card issue to ongoing foreign affairs, saying “we can’t keep the world on our shoulders and keep spending money on all these forever wars in this international apparatus […] we want the nations of the earth to also make themselves great again.”