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President-elect Donald Trump's backers in Silicon Valley are at odds with his MAGA loyalists over a key issue: immigration.
In recent days, Elon Musk and others in the tech sector have voiced support for H-1B visas, which allow US companies to hire highly skilled workers from overseas. Their comments angered Trump backers who favor stricter immigration rules.
Musk's latest response to the backlash came late Friday in an expletive-laden X post. He said an H-1B visa allowed him and others to build "SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong."
"I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend," he posted.
Trump appeared to side with Musk on Saturday, telling The New York Post that he has "always liked the visas."
"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," he said.
In 2020, Trump authorized a freeze on visas, including the H-1B, in what his administration said was an attempt to reserve jobs for Americans amid the economic hardships brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The debate over H-1Bs began after Trump offered Sriram Krishnan, a Chennai-born, Indian American investor, a role as a senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence.
Krishnan, who recently lived in London while leading an expansion of the venture capital firm A16z, moved to the United States after graduating from college in India and worked at several tech firms, including Microsoft, Twitter, and Meta.
Criticism has largely come from anonymous social media accounts — one X post asked if anyone had voted "for this Indian to run America," prompting a defense from Trump's AI and crypto czar, David Sacks.
Krishnan's appointment has prompted a wider debate on the merits of H-1B visas.
Some tech leaders who have been deeply critical of illegal immigration have stepped up to defend immigration policies that allow high-skilled foreign workers to stay in the United States legally.
Musk said on Thursday his priority was bringing in top engineering talent legally — saying it is "essential for America to keep winning."
"Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct," he wrote on X.
"America rose to greatness over the past 150 years, because it was a meritocracy more than anywhere else on Earth. I will fight to my last drop of blood to ensure that it remains that land of freedom and opportunity," he added later.
Musk's co-lead at the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also took to X on Thursday to argue that tech companies often hire foreign-born engineers to avoid what he called an American culture that has "venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long."
"A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," he wrote in a nearly 400-word post.
In a later post, he said immigration rules should be reformed more effectively to funnel talent to the United States. The H-1B system was not effective, he said, and "should be replaced with one that focuses on selecting the very best of the best."
Marc Benioff, the boss of Salesforce, also weighed in, offering a solution to keep the "best and brightest" foreign students in the US after graduation: "Can we staple a US green card to every degree earned at an American university?"
The pro-immigration messages haven't gone down well with everyone in Trump's orbit.
Matt Gaetz, the former congressman who was Trump's initial pick for attorney general, wrote on X Thursday that tech leaders should butt out.
When Republicans embraced them, he said, "We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy."
Meanwhile, the far-right activist and Trump supporter Laura Loomer expressed opposition to H-1B visas and concerns over the "replacement of American tech workers by Indian immigrants."
Where Trump will land on the issue remains to be seen. Immigration lawyers have warned tech workers that a "storm is coming" and suggested that foreign workers with visas who have left the US should get back before Trump takes office.
