Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller reportedly told supporters during an off-record phone call that the temporary immigration ban is part of a larger plan to crackdown in the long-term.
Audio of the phone call was leaked to the Washington Post, who have constantly attempted to vilify Miller for his hawkish stances on immigration.
“The most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor,” Miller said, according to the report from the Washington Post.
“As a numerical proposition, when you suspend the entry of a new immigrant from abroad, you’re also reducing immigration further because the chains of follow-on migration that are disrupted,” said Miller, who helped author the executive order. “So the benefit to American workers compounds with time.”
Miller explained that the 60 day ban, which Trump signed on Wednesday, will also help curb the flow of chain migration in the long run.
Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli also joined the call and expressed that the temporary ban is in line with Trump’s overall policy goals.
“This is something the president has been looking at himself since the economic effects of the covid virus began,” Cuccinelli reportedly said. “We’ve had numerous conversations with him. And so what you saw yesterday was a continuation of his own thinking.”
The ban is intended to prevent immigrants from taking jobs from Americans during record high unemployment and layoffs due to the coronavirus.
“It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrants, labor flown in from abroad,” Trump said at Tuesday’s White House coronavirus briefing, referring to the 22 million people who have filed for unemployment benefits over the past four weeks. “We must first take care of the American worker.”
