Donald Trump on Saturday said in a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech giants like Elon Musk that he supports a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country.
“I’ve always liked (H1-B) visas, I’ve always been in favor of them, so we have them,” the president-elect told the New York Post in his first public comments. Since the matter gained prominence this week.
The anger between Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump supporters, mainly in Silicon Valley, has come to a head, with Musk even vowing to “go to war” on the issue.
Trump’s insistent demands for tougher curbs on immigration were central to his election victory over President Joe Biden in November. He has vowed to deport all undocumented immigrants and limit legal immigration.
But tech entrepreneurs like Tesla’s Musk — as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, who is set to co-chair a government cost-cutting panel under Trump with Musk — say the United States produces too few highly skilled graduates, and They enthusiastically support H1-. B programme.
Musk, who himself came from South Africa on an H1-B, posted on his X platform on Thursday that attracting elite engineering talent from abroad is “essential to keeping America winning.”
Adding bitterness to the debate was a post by Ramaswami, the son of immigrants from India, who condemned “American culture”, which he said venerates normality, while also saying that the United States America is in danger of “having our ass handed to us by China.”
That angered many prominent conservatives, who had been supporting Trump long before Musk loudly joined them this year, and invested more than $250 million in the Republican’s campaign.
“The President is waiting for the inevitable divorce between Trump and Big Tech,” said Laura Loomer, a far-right MAGA leader known for her conspiracy theories who often flew with Trump on his campaign plane. Were.
“We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats.”
He and others said Trump should boost American workers and further limit immigration.
‘MAGA Civil War’
Musk, who had already angered some Republicans after leading an online campaign that helped seal a bipartisan budget agreement last week, hit back at his critics.
Posting on the social media site X, which he owns, he warned of a “MAGA civil war.”
Musk rebuked one critic, saying, “I will fight a war on this issue.”
In turn, Trump strategist Steve Bannon wrote on the platform GetR that the H1-B program brings in immigrants who are essentially “indentured servants” who work for lower wages than US citizens.
In a swipe at Musk, a close friend of Trump, Bannon called the Tesla CEO a “child.”
Some of Trump’s core supporters say they fear he is falling under the influence of big tech donors like Musk and moving away from his campaign promises.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump’s comments could calm intraparty discord, which has highlighted how contentious changes to the immigration system could be after he takes office in January.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
