Michael Strain offers five groups of reasons — I count eleven reasons in all — to doubt that Trump means it when he says he favors higher legal immigration. Four of them have to do with Trump’s efforts to fight illegal immigration.
I would put his desire to end birthright citizenship in that group: People who want to end that policy generally oppose it not because it makes legal immigrants’ children citizens, but because it makes illegal immigrants’ children citizens too. I would also put Trump’s (inferred) opposition to the executive grant of temporary protected status to many Haitians who came or stayed here illegally in this group.
A legal process may protect them from the normal consequence of being here illegally — namely, being subject to deportation — but Trump and Vance want to undo that decision.
Another four of them involve opposition to low-skilled immigration, which is compatible with support for higher total levels of immigration. That leaves three items. First is Trump’s support for the “Muslim ban,” which, again, is opposition to a category of legal immigration that is compatible with wanting higher numbers overall.
Second is Trump’s lack of any concern that mass deportations of illegal immigrants will have a chilling effect on legal immigration. I suspect that this possible effect has not crossed his mind. (I also suspect that we don’t have anything like the administrative capacity to carry out a mass-deportation program, let alone do so while also processing a record level of legal immigrants.) Here we may be broaching a philosophical question too deep for me to address: If Trump wants things that are practically incompatible with one another, which if any of them does he really favor?
This leaves Strain’s last and strongest piece of evidence: Trump’s support for the RAISE Act, which would have cut legal immigration. Strain says Trump advocated this “for years.” I count it as less than two years: Trump endorsed the act in April 2017 and called for the “highest ever” level of legal immigration in February 2019 (in his State of the Union address). As far as I can tell, when he has talked about levels of legal immigration since then, he has consistently advocated higher levels.
Two reporters asked Trump in June 2019 why he had endorsed the RAISE Act if he supports higher immigration levels. Their account: “‘I disagreed with that aspect of it,’ Trump told us, almost as an aside.”
My conclusion from all of the data: Trump currently wants higher levels of legal immigration. What he will want tomorrow, I have no idea.