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Trump’s Immigration Legacy

  • Rebecca Hamlin EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 28, 2021
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Abstract

From the moment that he first announced his presidential candidacy until his final days in office, Donald Trump’s signature personal political cause was the restriction of immigration. Media coverage and public debate often focused on Trump’s rhetorical invocation of this issue and emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigration in particular, as symbolized by his famous proposal to build a wall across the southern border of the United States. But while the wall itself was not completed, the Trump administration worked aggressively through the federal bureaucracy to reduce all forms of immigration. The Trump administration’s record on immigration should therefore be understood as extending far beyond charged presidential rhetoric and sporadic wall-building efforts, leaving a much more consequential substantive legacy in American immigration policy that will not be quickly or easily reversed by future presidents.


Corresponding author: Rebecca Hamlin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA, E-mail:

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Published Online: 2021-07-28

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