Steve Bannon’s longtime suspicion of successful immigrants is the key to this weekend’s chaos

Shortly after President Trump issued his sweeping immigration order Friday evening, questions began to arise about its scope. It clearly suspended the refugee program, and blocked new immigration from residents of seven majority-Muslim countries. But it slowly became clear that it went even further than that.

As agencies confirmed Saturday, the ban on entry into the US also applied to existing US lawful permanent residents from those seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. So as many as 500,000 green card holders, many of whom have lived and worked in the US for years, suddenly learned that if they travel outside the country they may not be allowed back in (the White House says they’ll be considered only on a case-by-case basis). Some were in transit when the order was issued and detained at airports across the country upon arrival.

According to CNN’s Evan Perez and Pamela Brown, this shockingly broad move was the brainchild of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Remarkably, they report that when the order was released Friday, the Department of Homeland Security concluded that it wouldn’t affect green card holders. But “overnight,” this decision was overruled by the White House, with Bannon’s personal involvement. (White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may have walked this back somewhat during a television appearance Sunday, but it’s not entirely clear.)

While refugees are facing more imminent peril and fleeing more desperate situations, in its own way the green card move is immensely worrying too. Because here, Trump was not just preventing new people from coming — he’s changing the rules for people who are already here legally. He is sending the message loud and clear that the United States is no longer a welcoming place for foreign-born people who have lived and worked here for years. Even conservatives sympathetic with Trump’s refugee restrictions were flabbergasted that he applied them to green card holders, with David French of National Review calling it “madness.”

But for those who have followed Bannon’s career and statements over the years, this is no surprise at all. Bannon infamously bragged that his website Breitbart was “the platform” for the racist alt-right movement, and regularly featured lurid tales of crimes committed by immigrants. He’s said the US needs to “take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam.”

And once, he made clear that he is not particularly enthusiastic even about immigrants who are peaceful, successful, and economically productive.

In November 2015, Steve Bannon interviewed Donald Trump for a Breitbart radio program. One particular part of their exchange was resurfaced and made the rounds late last year, but deserves more attention in the wake of this executive order.

The exchange (which begins around the 17 minute mark here) starts with Trump riffing about how top foreign-born Ivy league graduates should be allowed to stay in America where they can be “job creators.” But then Bannon spoke up to disagree, and he did so in a very revealing way:

TRUMP: We have to keep our talented people in this country.

BANNON: Um—

TRUMP: I think you agree with that. Do you agree with that?

BANNON: Well I got a tougher — you know, when two thirds or three quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think — on, my point is, a country’s more like, [inaudible], a country’s more than an economy. We’re a civic society.

Bannon’s “statistic” that over two-thirds of Silicon Valley CEOs are Asian-born isn’t even close to being true, since only a small minority are. But the bigger takeaway is that Bannon was disturbed enough by this mistaken idea to bring it up. He was evidently trying to choose his words carefully, but he made it crystal clear that he was disturbed by the (fictional) idea of all these Asian-born CEOs running around in America.

Once you keep those views in mind, the method behind the “madness” of the Trump administration’s treatment of green card holders becomes clear. Most Republicans generally profess to love legal immigration. They say they are only concerned with the illegal variety (and Trump himself has said the same).

But some of the people around Trump, like Bannon, top White House policy aide Stephen Miller, and attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, go much further. They want to privilege native-born Americans over even the most entrepreneurial and industrious (and legal) immigrants.

Trump’s new order has blocked Samira Asgari, a 30-year old Iranian woman who was on her way to the US to start a postdoctoral fellowship in genomics at a Harvard-affiliated hospital, from boarding her connecting flight in Frankfurt. It has prevented Nazanin Zinouri, a Clemson engineering graduate of Iranian descent who’d lived in the US for seven years and legally worked at a technology firm, from returning from a trip to visit her parents. It has resulted in Suha Abushamma, a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic with a Sudanese passport, being forced to leave the country.

All this isn’t a bug to Steve Bannon. It’s a feature. As his comments make clear, he doesn’t like it when immigrants are too successful in America. And because he won an internal battle in the Trump administration, US government policy could turn the lives of up to 500,000 green card holders upside down.

Journalist Josh Green, who wrote the definitive pre-White House profile of Bannon, tweeted Saturday night that he asked a friend of Bannon’s to explain what he was thinking with the immigration order. The friend replied: “America first. Americans first.” Indeed.