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Under Trump’s new immigration rule, his own grandfather likely wouldn’t have gotten in
By Philip Bump August 3 at 11:40 AM
It wasn’t until the media started asking questions that the White House’s introduction of a law curtailing legal immigration got contentious. During the daily press briefing, CNN’s Jim Acosta, himself a son of Cuban immigrants, challenged senior adviser Stephen Miller on a component of the proposed bill which would grant English-speakers more favor in gaining admission to the United States.
“Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them you have to speak English?” Acosta asked. “Can’t people learn how to speak English when they get here?”
The answer is, of course, that they can. As President Trump’s grandfather did. As Stephen Miller’s great-grandparents did. And as a member of Trump’s own Cabinet did.
The policy, the Raise Act, would introduce a point-based system for new applicants to enter the United States. In addition to speaking English, points would be awarded based on answers to these other questions that Miller mentioned: “Can they support themselves and their families financially? Do they have a skill that will add to the U.S. economy? Are they being paid a high wage?
Were that policy in place in 1885, Friedrich Trumpf would likely not have gained entry to the United States. The immigration record for his arrival that year indicates that he arrived without an identifiable “calling”: The word “none” sits next to his name in that column.
A biographer of Trumpf — father of Fred Trump, who was the father of the president — told Deutsche Welle that Donald Trump’s grandfather didn’t speak English when he got here.
“He came to New York,” Gwenda Blair said, “and, after he learnt English, he went to the West Coast, ran restaurants, amassed a nest egg, then went back to Kallstadt, married the girl next door and brought her to New York.” It was on the West Coast that Trumpf (now just Trump) became a citizen and registered to vote in the 1892 election.
But: no skills, no English. Would he have gotten in?
