Actually not just merit based. He’s been talking about more ag permits too. But the net effect of his position last year was a big cut in legal immigration:
What we really need is a moratorium on all immigration for a good decade—while we expel the 30 million-plus currently here illegally.
Most of those breathless, panic-struck headlines are from hard left websites such as afsc.org, politicfact.org, migrationpolicy.org, latimes.com, etc.
Every story is about tightening rules regarding a potential immigrant's chances of becoming a "public charge." I chose a story from American Progress, and here is the conclusion paragraph:
Trump’s proposed change to the LPC rule is more radical and far-reaching in scope than commonly reported. The revised LPC test will directly apply to roughly 900,000 potential immigrants and another 176 million potential nonimmigrants each year. Furthermore, the Trump administration has made no attempt to estimate how many people will fail the test each year. It is not unreasonable to think that somewhere between 17 and 61 percent of otherwise eligible immigrants seeking green cards could fail the proposed test. The proposed rule’s effect on potential nonimmigrants is less clear, but because so many people are admitted as nonimmigrants each year, even a small increase in the percentage of those denied visas and admission on public charge grounds could end up being very large. What’s more, relatively few of these denials will be based on the past or current receipt of benefits; instead, most of the LPC predictions will be based on people having working-class incomes or disabilities.The Trump administration’s proposal is an ill-conceived attempt to unilaterally restrict legal immigration, and it should be withdrawn before irreversible harm is done. If the public charge rule is not withdrawn, Congress should pass legislation blocking the use of federal funds to implement the proposal.
What hand-wringing drivel.