President Trump and migration at 3

Abstract

Candidate Trump made reducing unauthorized migration a central theme of his campaign in 2015 and 2016 (Martin, 2017a). Soon after taking office, Trump issued executive orders that instructed the Department of Homeland Security to build a wall on the Mexico-US border, increase deportations, and reduce refugee admissions (Martin, 2017b). Immigration systems are like supertankers, hard to turn around quickly, but President Trump has in three years developed a restrictionist migration policy aimed at reducing unauthorised migration and asylum seeking. Even though Trump's businesses employ low-skilled guest workers, there have been no major changes to the H-2A and H-2B guest worker programs.