Trump Aide Forcefully Defends Bid to Reduce Legal Immigration
- New bill backed by Trump would reduce U.S. immigration
- Miller says Lazarus poem ‘added later’ to Statue of Liberty
Trump Endorses Bill That Reduces Legal Immigration
Top White House adviser Stephen Miller defended President Donald Trump’s support for legislation that would reduce legal immigration to the U.S. and evaluate visa applications based on merit, calling it a policy that would help low-income and minority Americans gain jobs.
Miller dismissed criticism that the proposed bill would upend the American principle, embodied in a poem etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty, that “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are welcome in the nation. “The New Colossus,” the sonnet by Emma Lazarus, “was added later” and “is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty,” Miller told a CNN reporter who asked about it.