Former US President Donald Trump, vying to return to the top post in elections due this year, has softened his stand on immigration with a new proposal that will benefit Indian and other foreign students.

The Republican leader known for his staunch remarks against immigrants has promised that if he’s elected, foreign students who graduate from US colleges will automatically get Green Card, which allows permanent residency in the US.

Trump said these students become multibillionaires after they return to their home countries like India and China after graduating from US colleges. He sought to replicate the same in the US.

The US presidential elections due in November is expected to see a second edition of President Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, in which immigration and deportation of illegal immigrants are among the key issues for voters.

Trump had earlier this year branded illegal immigrants “animals, not human” at an election campaign. He, however, said in a recent podcast that he always supported a merit-based legal immigration system.

He said in the “All-In” podcast that he plans to offer Green Cards automatically as part of a diploma to students who graduate from a US college, which will help them continue their stay in the country.

The podcast was hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg – all venture capitalists, three of whom are immigrants.

Speaking in the podcast, Trump recalled “stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t – they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places…and they become multi-billionaires employing thousands and thousands of people, and it could have been done here.”

A Green Card is an identity document for permanent residency in the United States.

The former president further lamented that “we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools”.

He also reiterated his first-term policy of foreign students getting a Green Card after receiving a higher education degree in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field.

“Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years, if you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country,” Trump said.

“We force the brilliant people, the people that graduate from college, the people that are number one in their class from the best colleges, you have to be able to recruit these people and keep the people,” the former president asserted.

He said some graduates at the top of the class can’t even make a deal with the company because they don’t think they will be able to stay in the country, but that is “going to end one day”.

Trump’s recent remarks were in contrast to the immigration policies of his administration when he was in power, which included restrictions on green cards and visas.

The US has over a million foreign students studying in colleges there, as of the 2022-23 academic year, and this figure can only be expected to rise.