Donald Trump, our new public enemy No. 1, wants to ban J1 visas if he becomes president of the U.S.
Trump, who is currently leading the polls for the Republican nomination, lists a number of his policies on his website, DonaldJTrump.com, one of one is a requirement for businesses to hire Americans first, instead of job seekers of other nationalities.
This even trickles down to the J1 student visa, as Trump would see the programme cut in favour of having the jobs taken up by the "inner-city youth".
According to the website “the J-1 visa jobs program for foreign youth will be terminated and replaced with a resume bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers to the J-1 visa program”.
That's bad news for Irish students, but seeing as over 150,000 Irish students have used the visa in the past 50 years, we can kind of see why he thinks it'll be a good idea.
More jobs for Americans is never going to be a bad policy if you want to get elected, but seeing as he's already taken flack for his comments about Mexicans, and women, does he really want to piss off the Irish? Seeing as he's leading the polls, maybe there's something we're missing. We're not going to pretend to understand politics, but seriously America, this guy?
The Irish Examiner