In a speech to graduates of the FBI Academy, Trump talked about calling on Congress to end “chain migration” and “visa lottery,” and compared legal immigrants to trash.
“You think the countries [are] givin’ us their best people? No. What kind of system is that? They come in by a lottery. They give us their worst people. They put ’em in a bin…really the worst of the worst. ‘Congratulations, you’re going to the United States.’ What a system,” he said in part of his speech.
According to Vox:
Donald Trump thinks immigrants are trash, metaphorically speaking.
Not just unauthorized immigrants. Legal immigrants — specifically, those who come to the US on “diversity visas,” after being selected in a lottery for residents of countries that are underrepresented in the US immigration system as a whole.
It’s not surprising that Trump is wrong on the facts — people selected in the visa lottery go through exactly as much screening as any other would-be immigrant to the United States, and the governments of their countries are not deliberately “picking” them to immigrate.
The fact that he spent part of a speech to graduates of the FBI Academy denigrating people who have followed US law is, for better or worse, only slightly more so. Trump’s speeches to law enforcement are often his most unguarded and rip-roaring. They’re the speeches in his official capacity that feel closest to the speeches he delivers at rallies — as if he sees law enforcement officers as part of his base, as close to him as his staunchest supporters.