Elon Musk has become embroiled in a bitter row with some of Donald Trump’s right-wing supporters over immigration and the tech industry.
The billionaire – who has been selected to head up the new Department of Government Efficiency – backs the H-1B visa programme and has called for more highly skilled workers in the industry.
But hardliners among the president-elect’s Make America Great Again base have criticised the visas, saying they go against his hardline immigration policies.
The ‘civil war’ touched off this week when Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration.
Krishnan favours the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the US.
Loomer claimed the move was ‘not America First policy’ and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves.
Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns.
Loomer claimed Musk stripped her verified status and blocked her ability to gather paying subscribers over her opposition to the H-1B programme.
The H-1B visa allows US firms to employ foreign workers in certain speciality roles.
It is the largest visa category in terms of overseas worker numbers.
To qualify, an applicant must have a ‘theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge’, and a bachelor’s degree or higher in their field.
They must also have been offered a temporary job by a US company offering a wage that cannot be lower than that paid to similarly qualified workers or below the prevailing wage for the job in the geographic area where that person will be working.
The US caps the number of H-1B visas that can be issued each fiscal year, which is 65,000, with an additional 20,000 set aside for those graduating with master’s degrees or higher from a US college or university.
Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers.
‘There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,’ he said in a post. ‘It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.’
Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers.
He and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government, weighed in, defend the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers.
‘If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be,’ Musk wrote on X, saying in another post that ‘bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent’ is ‘essential for America to keep winning’.
Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions.
Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift.
But his positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement.
His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign.
He has focused on immigrants who come into the US illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration, including family-based visas.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program ‘very bad’ and ‘unfair’ for US workers.
After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a ‘Buy American and Hire American’ executive order, which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers.
Trump’s businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club, and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the H-1B program for highly skilled workers.
During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history.
But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from US colleges.
‘I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,’ he told the All-In podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world.
Those comments came on the cusp of Trump’s budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.
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