Concerns are growing in the Korean community around a possible second Trump term as the former president and likely GOP nominee continues to escalate his anti-immigrant rhetoric, reports The Korea Daily.
Korean Green Card holders and those in the country on work visas told the paper they fear what a second Trump administration might do in terms of tightened immigration policy and are considering alternative options, including applying for citizenship or seeking out employers who offer a path to legal residency.
Trump, coming off wins in the Iowa and New Hampshire Republican primaries, has been increasingly caustic on the topic of immigration, which he leveraged successfully in his 2016 bid for the White House, using terms like “rapists” and “criminals” to describe those entering the country from abroad.
More recently, Trump has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country,” a phrase often ascribed to Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi Party of WWII.
Such rhetoric has Korean immigrants worried over the potential that without firmer legal footing here they may be forced to leave the country. That fear stems in part from experience during Trump’s first term when his administration sought to dramatically curb levels of inbound migration by, for example, halving the number of Green Cards issued.
“The whole green card process just stopped one day, and then the income requirements became stricter,” one woman who recently went through the process told The Korea Daily. “The problem is that everything changes immediately even before preparing for how the policy will be implemented.”
She is advising friends to hurry up and apply for residency in order to avoid potential snags should Trump regain the White House next year.
Still, experts urge caution, saying many of Trump’s more bombastic statements would be illegal under the Constitution and therefore pose little threat to immigrants now in the country.
Immigration experts also note that as of yet they’ve seen no rush to apply for citizenship as was seen in 2016.
“While there was a surge in citizenship applications around this time in 2016 before the presidential election, the number of inquiries this time around is not as high,” Juyeon Song, an immigration lawyer, was quoted as saying.
However, she noted, “Considering the confusion caused by the policy changes every morning at the time, those who can apply now should hurry.”
