US President Donald Trump has said he is fine with legal immigration and that the nation will need more of it as manufacturing is going to expand because of his tariff policies.
"I'm fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people, and I'm absolutely fine with it. We want to have it", he said on Monday at his first news conference as president.
He ran the news conference while signing executive orders at the Oval Office, which he had just entered.
As he signed orders to stop illegal migration and tighten visa procedures to stop terrorists, he gave assurance on legal immigration.
"We need it because we're going to have a lot of companies coming in to avoid tariffs," he said. "You know, if you don't want tariffs all you have to do is build your plant in the US. So we're going to have a lot of workers coming in. We have to have legal immigration."
Trump declared a national emergency at the US southern border allowing for deploying the National Guard and other forces, expediting the building of the border wall, and requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico.
Some categories of children born in the US will also not get automatic citizenship, under his orders.
Another order declares drug cartels terrorist organisations.
Trump said that this may open the way to use the military to attack the drug cartels within Mexico.
He threatened BRICS nations with 100 percent tariffs if they developed an alternative currency to the dollar.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar of India has already nixed the BRICS currency concept. India is the second-largest economy in the group, with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa forming the original group and five others joining more recently.
Questioned about his statements that he would end the Ukraine War on his first day, Trump joked that half a day was not yet in the books.
He said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky was willing to make a deal, but Russia's President Vladimir Putin wasn't.
He said, "I have to speak to President Putin".
"He's destroying Russia by not making a deal. I think Russia's gonna be in big trouble," he said.
Trump said that he had received an invitation to visit China and the trip could happen this year.
He promised to apply a blanket 10 percent tariff on all imports in view of the US's trade deficits with all but two countries and was being taken for a ride.
The 25 percent tariffs he threatened on Canada and Mexico for permitting illegal migration and drugs into the US would come into effect on February 1.
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