Trump passed an EO stopped legal immigration from certain countries. I get your point but pretending Trump isn't also hostile to some legal immigrants seems naive.

You don't know a single Trump voter that's opposed to legal immigration from countries that in majority muslim?

Trump outlawed legal visa holders from Iran from entering the US when he signed the first immigration executive order. I don't think Trump voters were against that.

The point is that what used to be legal (like say, visiting from a "Muslim-majority" country for tourism or to find work), or what should be legal, isn't... with bigotry and anti-intellectualism at the heart of it. Economics have nothing to do with it aside from the fact that an economy gets bigger the more people who participate in it - as in - we need more people, not less.

> I don't know a single person, and I know a good number of Trump voters, who is opposed to legal immigration. What many people, myself included, are opposed to is the illegal part

If you are only opposed to the illegal part and not the immigration part, it's relatively easy to fix: just better align the supply of visas with demand. There's a number of obvious things you could do to achieve that:

(1) Keep by-category caps but eliminate per-country caps within each visa category entirely, or

(2) Keep existing caps, but allow immigrants qualified in existing immigrant visa categories to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to skip the line and get a "supernumerary visa".

(3) Allow people who aren't barred entry but who aren't qualified in a y existing immigrant category to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to enter on a special visa.

Obviously, if what one has a problem with is immigration and the "illegal" part is a smokescreen, then one will be less likely to support reforms which address illegality without aiming to reduxe overall immigration.

If you look at Trump's ACTUAL actions (denying re-entry to "permanent resident" green card holders, etc.), you'll see that even Trump makes this conflation himself.

It's important to judge someone the most by what they do, and not just by what they say.

But it's also important to judge people by what they say, i.e. people saying "he doesn't actually grab women by the pussy, that's just locker-room talk."

"It's important to judge someone the most by what they do, and not _just_ by what they say." (emphasis: mine)

You might want to rethink that assumption, what about Trump & co.'s stance on h1b visas? Which are probably the only legal channel for skilled immigrants

People say the right things but there is so much anti-immigrant sentiment right now. Immigrants have literally been getting shot and killed.