Fox News Town Hall with Donald Trump Sidelines Wages, Legal Migration

Immigration Question to Trump at Townhall
Screenshot Fox News

Fox News’s townhall session with President Donald Trump on March 5 averted any questions about raising wages or curbing the legal inflow of foreign workers.

The 46-minute program did not mention wages or salaries, Trump’s “Blue-Collar Boom,” blue-collar H-2B visa workers, or Trump’s unfulfilled, campaign-trail promise to reform the huge white-collar H-1B program.

But it did have 4.2 million viewers, making it “the most-watched town hall in cable news history,” according to Fox.

The only immigration question was focused on illegal migration — which brings in far fewer wage-cutting workers than do the various H-2A and H-1B visa worker programs, or the legal immigration of roughly one million people each year:

Q Immigration.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Q Next question is from Jennifer, and she has a question about this issue.

THE PRESIDENT: Hi.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Thank you, Mr. President. This is truly an honor and one of the best days of my life. Just don’t tell my husband. (Laughs.)

THE PRESIDENT: Wow. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I want to know: How are you going to control the illegal immigration without support from the Democratic Party?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know it’s been hard, but we’ve done it incredibly. It could have been — we have things called “loopholes,” and the loopholes are terrible, like lottery — where you give lotteries. They pick lotteries and they have people coming into our country ….

The soft-ball question allowed Trump to talk about his growing progress in building the border wall:

And, most importantly, the wall is way under construction. We’re up to 129 miles already. Where we have a wall, by the way, nobody is coming through — practically nobody. We will have, by early next year, almost 500 miles of wall. And once we have that wall, it’s going to stop drugs, it’s going to stop big percentages of everything coming in. Okay? (Applause.) And we’re really — really doing job.

Trump’s tough policies have dramatically reduced blue-collar migration over the Mexican border, amid furious resistance from various pro-migration groups in business, law, and Congress. In February, for example, officials slashed the catch and release of migrants to just 2,000 migrants, greatly easing the task of sending them home once their legal stay is up.

In May 20189, 80,000 migrants were released because of the mass migration to the border.

Trump’s lower-migration, “Hire American” policies have helped to spike wages for blue-collar Americans.

But Trump has zig-zagged while business donors push him to increase the legal inflow of white-collar workers via the H-1B and Optional Practical Training programs.

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