United States President-elect Donald Trump has thrown his Make America Great Again (MAGA) fanbase under the bus after backing technology bosses Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in their push to maintain the H-1B visa programme that allows American companies to bring skilled workers from abroad.
The dispute, which began around Christmas, over the future of a crucial visa policy could plunge the MAGA agenda into a protracted crisis ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Mr Trump told the New York Post. “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 added.
Messrs Musk and Vivek, who are both Trump allies, have been under fire for days on X from the MAGA crowd over the push to expand legal immigration, arguing that companies are exploiting the H-1B visa scheme to import foreigners, especially Indians, at the expense of Americans.
Mr Vivek, who is of Indian origin, blamed America’s culture in his argument for an H-1B visa, in a post on X, saying a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers.”
The post immediately attracted backlash from anti-immigration Trump supporters, faulting Mr Vivek’s decision to tag Americans as lazy.
Some also argued that companies use the H1-B visa as a ‘scam’ to employ foreigners for cheaper pay and more work instead of citizens for more money and less work.
In his own argument, Mr Musk defended the H-1B visa programme as attracting the “top ~0.1%” of engineering talent”.
However, critics immediately countered his claim by flooding him with screenshots of job postings at Mr Musk’s companies filled by people with H1-B visas, showing salaries of $200,000 and much less.
They also argued that many of the hires working at Mr Musk’s company and other major companies in the U.S. did not constitute an elite talent pool, with positions like cookers, clerical staff and other entry-level positions occupied by people on H1-B visas.
Meanwhile, Mr Musk has said he will go to ‘war’ to defend the visa scheme, stating, “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 H1-B”.
