President-elect Donald Trump backed his government cost-cutting duo of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over some of his top supporters on issuing visas to immigrants who are highly skilled in specific areas.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Mr. Trump told the New York Post on Saturday.
His comments refer to H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers who have exceptional skill in specific occupations.
“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,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy, who will lead Mr. Trump’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency, defended H-1B visas last week, arguing that the high-tech companies they operate need to import workers.
The tech field especially has benefited from the visa program. Mr. Musk, X owner and Tesla CEO, was born in South Africa and held an H1-B before becoming a U.S. citizen. Tesla snatched up more than 700 of the visas this year.
Mr. Musk argued that America needs to double the number of engineers and that the number of “super talented” and “super motivated” engineers in the U.S. is “far too low.” He compared the H-1B visa program to a sports team bringing in new talent “to keep winning.”
“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win,” Mr. Musk posted on social media.
He further angered MAGA supporters when he called them “contemptible fools” for lashing out against him and Mr. Ramaswamy.
Mr. Ramaswamy, a first-generation Indian American, originally said the reason tech companies “often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ’native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation),” but is instead because of “culture.”
He argued that a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
Mr. Musk’s comment came in response to “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, who contended that conservatives’ arguments against skilled immigrant laborers amounted to “MAGA … taking a page from Democrats on how to lose elections while feeling good about themselves.”
“Yes,” Mr. Musk replied. “And those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.”
He later clarified that “contemptible fools” refer to “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists. They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.”
The comments from the DOGE duo angered staunch Trump supporters, like Laura Loomer and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“I have been more loyal to President Trump and his agenda than ANYONE. And I have only been punished for it,” Ms. Loomer posted on X. “Pay attention MAGA. This is how you will all be treated now that Big Tech has infiltrated MAGA. ’President Musk’ is starting to look real.”
Ms. Greene, who will chair the House subcommittee that will deal with DOGE, argued that she knows “firsthand our workforce issues,” but that she believes “we must make the hard and necessary changes here in the U.S. to educate, build, and facilitate a solid foundation of knowledgeable, highly skilled, talented, well paid, AMERICAN workers.”
Even former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a first-generation Indian American, argued in defense of U.S.-born Americans.
“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,” Ms. Haley posted on X. “We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”
During his first administration, Mr. Trump moved to increase the wage requirement for H1-B visas, but the move was blocked by a federal court. He also attempted to narrow the definition of “specialty occupations” that qualify for the visas. He also temporarily suspended H-1B visas in 2020.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Trump team for comment.
A member of the Trump-Vance transition team pointed The Times previously to a post on X from Stephen Miller, whom Mr. Trump has tapped as his deputy chief of staff for policy and who entered the online discourse by sharing a transcript of remarks the president-elect made on July 4, 2020.
The speech underneath Mount Rushmore focused on America’s culture and its accomplishments, such as the harnessing of electricity, the splitting of the atom and the moon landing.
“Americans must never lose sight of this miraculous story,” Mr. Trump said in the speech. “You should never lose sight of it, because nobody has ever done it like we have done it.”
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