Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Sunday that the H-1B visa program benefits the economy, throwing his weight behind President-elect Trump and Elon Musk in their argument against some of their base supporters.
In an interview on ABC News's "This Week," Lawler said immigration is necessary and that he supports the merit-based visa program for highly skilled. nonimmigrant workers.
"Here's a reality that we have to deal with. By the end of the century, we're projected to have a population decline. Our birth rate in the last 15 years has dropped from two children per woman to 1.66 per woman. So, the reality is we have a long-term population decline. We have a workforce shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, home health aides, ad workers, construction workers, hospitality workers."
“We need immigration. We need an immigration system that works, that is legal, and I fundamentally believe that you need to have a system that is focused on our economic needs as a country and a more merit-based immigration system than anything else. My wife is an immigrant. I have been through this process with her. It is a fundamentally broken system,” Lawler said.
“But the H-1B visa program in which you're talking about 65,000 visas, plus, you know, an additional 20,000 for, you know, those with master's degrees, the fact is, you know, that is critical to our economy, and as President Trump said, it's a program he's used over the years for his businesses, and it's something that has obviously been beneficial to our economy,” Lawler continued.
“The United States has been built on immigration, and it is vital to the continued growth within our economy,” he added.
Trump on Saturday expressed his support for the visa program in an interview with the New York Post, saying, “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.”
Trump’s support for the program comes as two of his key allies set to run the newly created "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have faced heightened scrutiny on Musk’s social platform X from some in the GOP, including far-right activist Laura Loomer and other hard-line anti-immigration Republicans.
The dispute further escalated late Friday night after Musk pledged to “go to war” over the issue in a post on X.
“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” he wrote in the post.
Asked about Trump ally Steve Bannon calling Trump a "toddler" and the visa program a "scam," Lawler said, “I don't speak in conspiracy theories, so you'll have to ask, you know, Steve Bannon and others.”
“But, look, the fact is this,” he continued. “There's no question we want an America in which Americans are employed, in which they are able to fill the needs of our workforce, which means we need to revamp our education system, our K-12 system.”
“We need vocational schools. We need to get kids on an earlier STEM trajectory so that they are becoming the engineers of tomorrow. But the fact is, India is producing a significant number more of engineers than we are. So it's both a function of fixing our education system and having a legal immigration system that works.”
