By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Trump Aligning with Musk on Immigration

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday backed H-1B visas, siding with Elon Musk in the conservative squabble over the program that allows foreigners with technical skills to temporarily work in the United States.

“I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post in a phone interview. He added: “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.”

The comments come amid an online clash that has revealed a rift in Trump’s coalition ahead of his January inauguration. Musk and other business leaders see the visa program as essential for the U.S. tech industry. Still, anti-immigrant hard-liners such as right-wing activist Laura Loomer and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon say the system lets companies exploit cheap foreign labor at the expense of Americans.

While Trump said he employs H-1B workers, past reporting has found he employs workers under the H-2A program, which covers temporary visas for agricultural workers, and the H-2B program, for seasonal workers in tourism, hospitality, and landscaping sectors. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Still, Trump’s words send an important signal, said Sophie Alcorn, an attorney in Silicon Valley who specializes in business immigration.

“The president’s statement that he supports immigration and visas for highly skilled workers allows tech workers in Silicon Valley and the companies that employ them to breathe a huge sigh of relief in what has been a tumultuous several months,” Alcorn said.

Trump’s latest statements mark an early win for tech and business leaders who have aligned themselves with him in a bid for influence in his administration. But experts said it is unlikely to be the last word on the topic from the president-elect.

Trump’s stance on H-1B visas has shifted several times over the years, belying his claim that he has “always been in favor” of them. In a March 2016 statement, for instance, he vowed to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program.”

The H-1B program continued under his first administration, although it closely scrutinized H-1B applications as part of an approach it called “extreme vetting,” making the process more onerous for workers and employers. In the final year of his first term, Trump issued an order in 2020 that temporarily blocked new visas, including H-1Bs.

“In the first Trump term, he went after H-1B,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. But Trump’s most recent presidential campaign focused on stemming illegal immigration. That stance could be a boon to Musk and other tech industry leaders, whose businesses rely on software programmers and other skilled workers in the country legally on H-1B visas.

But Trump’s comments on Saturday, in which he appeared to conflate H-1B visas with the H-2B program, suggested he lacks a firm grasp on the specifics of the policy, Chishti added.

“Just because he says something to the New York Post doesn’t make it a reality in the world of immigration,” Chishti said.

Immigration issues have led to a schism among Trump’s advisers, some of whom believe that supporting legal immigration is key to building support for a crackdown on illegal immigration, while a more fervently nationalist group that includes Bannon argues for making immigration of all kinds more difficult.

Earlier on Saturday, Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, slammed Musk’s defense of the program in a post on the social network Gettr, calling him a “toddler” in need of a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services. He was responding to an X post in which Musk used an expletive to insult H-1B opponents and threatened to “go to war on this issue.”

“The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention,” said Tom Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama. “Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this does happen.”

 

Trump has previously opposed such visas

The H-1B visa program allows 65,000 highly skilled workers to immigrate to the US each year to fill a specific job and grants another 20,000 visas to such workers who have received an advanced degree in the US. Economists have argued the program allows US companies to maintain competitiveness and grow their business, creating more jobs in the US. The program is often associated with the tech sector, where companies have a high demand for specialized workers. Musk came to the US as a foreign student and later worked on an H1-B visa.

Trump has previously opposed H-1B visas, sharply criticizing them during his first presidential campaign as a vehicle for “abuse.” In a 2016 statement, Trump attacked the H-1B program as a method for US companies to bring foreign workers into the country “for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.”

In 2020, Trump restricted access to H-1B visas on several occasions, part of the administration’s effort to curb legal immigration while responding to the changing economic conditions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in his most recent presidential campaign, Trump has appeared more tolerant of highly skilled foreigners coming to work in the US. In a podcast interview in June, Trump said he wants to grant permanent residency to any foreign national who graduates college in the US.

“What I want to do, and what I will do is – you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said on the “All In” podcast.

Musk’s clash with members of Trump’s base over the visa issue marks another chapter in the tech billionaire’s growing influence in the president-elect’s orbit. After Musk led the opposition to a bipartisan government funding bill that was ultimately scrapped once Trump came out against it, Democrats began derisively labeling the tech mogul “President Musk” to suggest Musk his dictating policy goals to Trump. During remarks at a conservative activist gathering in Arizona on Sunday, Trump pushed back on the attacks from Democrats.

“No, he’s not taking the presidency. I like having smart people,” he said. “They’re on a new kick. ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ ‘Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine,’ all the different hoaxes. The new one is ‘President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.’ No, no, that’s not happening.”

 

 

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