A civil war has broken out over high-skilled worker visas, with the president-elect’s up-to-date tech allies like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on one side and the anti-immigrant MAGA base on the other.
The clash is a foretaste of the challenges holding Trump’s coalition together in implementing its immigration policy, an issue that defined his victory in 2024.
But while President-elect Trump has promised to stop illegal immigration at the southern border and launch a mass deportation effort, the latest debate is about legal immigrants here — exposing larger, sometimes racist, anti-immigrant sentiment on the right .
The The debate was sparked by Trump on Sunday when he announced he would appoint Sriram Krishnan as White House policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Krishnan quickly came under fire for a November post proposing changes to immigration policy: “Anything aimed at lifting country caps on green cards or allowing qualified people to immigrate would be huge.”
The right-wing extremist provocateur Laura Loomer called the comments “alarming.” He accused Krishnan of helping foreigners “come to the U.S. and take jobs that should be given to American STEM students.”
Most of the discussion began to focus on this H-1B visa programan employer-sponsored visa for highly skilled professionals, used primarily for computer and technical jobs. Congress has capped this program at 65,000 per year, plus an additional 20,000 for foreign professionals earning a master’s degree or doctorate from a U.S. college or university.
Members of the MAGA base argue that the visa program is being used to undercut American workers.
Some of the online reactions were blatantly racist against Indians. By law, no more than 7 percent of green cards issued per year may be issued to applicants from one country. The immense majority of outstanding applicants come from India. And Indian workers make up the majority of H-1B recipients at 72 percent approved in fiscal year 2023.
Meanwhile, a wave of Trump supporters in the tech industry expressed support for hiring highly skilled foreign workers.
Musk, who has become a close ally of Trump since the election, argued in a post on his social platform X that Silicon Valley often targets immigrants because there are too few U.S.-born engineers. The South African-born tech billionaire once held an H-1B visa himself.
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans, and we do, because it is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” the Tesla and SpaceX boss said. “However, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
Ramaswamy, co-chairman of Trump’s up-to-date Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Musk, previously called “eviscerate.” the H-1B visa program during his own presidential campaign. But he waded into the debate by blaming American culture for the shortage of American-born engineers, saying it had “worshipped mediocrity over excellence for far too long,” pointing to pop culture examples like that Sitcom “Saved by the Bell” and the characters Zach and Slater are “adored” over the school nerd Screech.
His comments were not well received by his fellow conservatives. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley criticized Ramaswamy, arguing that “there is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.”
“All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have,” she wrote on X. “We should be investing in and prioritizing Americans, not foreign workers.”
Other Silicon Valley conservatives, such as venture capitalists David Sacks and Joe Lonsdale, also joined the debate, arguing for more high-skilled immigration.
Sacks, who is set to serve as the White House artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, defended Krishnan, emphasizing that he is calling for the elimination of country-specific caps on green cards, not all restrictions on green cards.
“Supporting a confined number of highly skilled immigrants is still a dominant view on the right. Sriram is definitely not a ‘career lefty!'” Sacks said, responding to Loomer’s comments about Krishnan.
Lonsdale, who was reportedly involved in the DOGE planning efforts along with Musk and Ramaswamy, said he was “against more lower H1B immigrants” but argued that the US should “win in the talent game.”
Another type of foreign worker visa, the O-1 visa, is aimed at “individuals of exceptional ability or achievement” and has no caps but is issued to far fewer people each year than H-1B visas.
The main actors wanted to silky things over. musk agreed to a post on X However, the H-1B visa system is used to recruit “brilliant engineers” but is also “poorly implemented and misused like crazy,” to which Musk replied, “Exactly.”
Sacks also appeared interested in bridging the growing divide, emphasizing that he “completely” trusts up-to-date White House deputy chief for policy Stephen Miller on immigration policy.
“What I oppose is a baseless witch hunt against a highly qualified American for a position as an AI consultant,” he added.
Musk, Ramaswamy and Sacks are part of a growing conservatives from Silicon Valley who are traveling to Washington to join the up-to-date Trump administration after supporting the president-elect during the campaign.
While Silicon Valley has long been considered a liberal bastion, divisions within the industry emerged earlier this year as more tech executives, including former Democratic donors, backed Trump.
Musk, who has poured at least $250 million into the race to bolster Trump, has become a key figure in the president-elect’s inner circle beyond his formal position as DOGE co-chair. The tech billionaire played a central role in pushing a bipartisan year-end funding deal through Congress earlier this month, with some jokingly referring to him as “President Musk.”
Musk’s up-to-date prominence in Republican circles further complicates matters for those who oppose him on immigration policy.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is set to co-chair a DOGE subcommittee in the next Congress, echoed parts of Ramaswamy’s call for a stronger workplace culture while criticizing the H-1B program.
“Put down the selfie light and apply for a job and replace the H1-B visa holders and all other skilled jobs that accept foreign workers that American companies are desperate to hire,” Greene said Posted on X.
Still, the relatively up-to-date alliance between MAGA World and Silicon Valley conservatives is already showing signs of unraveling.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whom Trump tapped to be his attorney general before he left amid an ethics scandal, argued that conservatives have not asked tech executives to get involved in immigration policy.
“We welcomed the tech bros as they came running toward us to avoid the third-grade teacher choosing their child’s gender — and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” Gaetz wrote on X. “ We didn’t ask them to develop an immigration policy.” ”
In what was likely a subtle response to the division, Miller – an architect of Trump’s immigration policies in his first term – said I posted an excerpt from Trump’s speech from Mt. Rushmore on the eve of Independence Day 2020, which said: “Only America, no other place” could have produced icons like the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali.
Ramaswamy sought common ground with Miller, arguing in a repost that this is “exactly the American spirit we need to revive.”
Trump himself, meanwhile, did not comment on the issue during the debate Fox News Commitment Hosted by Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt.
But Trump criticized in 2016 the H-1B program on the grounds that it imported foreign workers “with the express purpose of replacing American workers at lower wages.” His first term aimed to do just that Increase wage requirements for H-1B visas, but the rule was ultimately blocked.
