Trump's base goes to war with incoming officials over US visas for foreign talent

The US president-elect's 'government efficiency' team, led by Elon Musk, suggests American workers are simply not up to snuff

By Yasmine El-Sabawi

Published date: 27 December 2024 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-base-goes-to-war-officials-over-us-visas-foreign-talent

If you haven't been on Elon Musk's X platform lately, you may have missed some of the most heated - and most frank - public debate in recent memory by incoming Trump administration officials and other conservatives on the value of the highly coveted H-1B foreign worker visas.

President-elect Donald Trump has yet to weigh in[1], but his advisers and supporters appear to have very conflicting opinions on whether the H-1B visas are indeed "making America great again".

According to the US Department of Labor, the H-1B program is designed for "nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations… of distinguished merit and ability".

A specialty occupation must include "the attainment of at least a bachelor's degree", and the programme is meant to "help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the US workforce".

A large portion of Trump's base is passionately opposed to greater immigration to the US, even if that means skilled labour, but some of Trump's most high-profile appointees to his incoming administration are staunchly in favour of it, deeming it a necessity, and want to increase its volume. 

The current debate began last week when the president-elect appointed Indian-American venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence on the incoming White House team. Krishnan previously worked at Microsoft and was one of the founders of Windows Azure.

Just before Christmas, one of Krishnan's earlier posts on X resurfaced, calling for an increase in skilled immigration - a reference to the H-1B program. He hoped Musk would tackle the issue in his new role.

DOGE, Krishnan said, should do "anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration".

DOGE is the so-called Department of Government Efficiency initiated by the incoming Trump administration and will be c0-headed by South African immigrant, billionaire and Tesla CEO Musk, as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential contender and first-generation Indian immigrant.

Infighting

Krishnan was met with racist backlash from hundreds of Trump supporters, particularly after he was announced for the White House role. 

But both Musk and Ramaswamy lent him their support, agreeing that more foreign talent is necessary to fill what they feel are glaring gaps in US companies - and to keep the US the most competitive in the world. 

"The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low," Musk wrote on his social media platform. "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."

He added that he is "referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning".

Ramaswamy took the argument a step further, calling out American society itself. 

"Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn't start in college, it starts YOUNG," he wrote on X.

"A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," he added. "I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity… and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates," referring to Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics degrees.

"'Normalcy' doesn't cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we'll have our asses handed to us by China," he added. 

The backlash was swift from Trump supporters.

"Turns out the 'waste' that DOGE wanted to cut from America was Americans," said Auron MacIntyre, a columnist at the conservative news site The Blaze.

Another user writing under a pseudonym said, "I'm still waiting on how this strategy benefits current Americans that worked to put [Ramaswamy] in this position."

The post also triggered a wave of rampant racism directed primarily at Indians, coming from Trump supporters and opponents of immigration. 

Other notable figures also weighed in.

Political analyst and founder of Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer, responded: "It's hard to win over Americans on attracting the best and the brightest from abroad when so many feel their own elected leaders haven't invested in them at home. Prioritize that, walk the talk, you (eventually) get more support for legal immigration."

But it was the remarks from far-right political commentator and Trump loyalist Laura Loomer that may have been the most inflammatory, as she called Indians "third world invaders" and said that "the average IQ in India is 76".

Replying to another user who said they wouldn't want to live in India, she said "you'd likely get raped on arrival".

Loomer has 1.4 million followers on X.

Citing an H-1B salary database for tech workers, she wrote that "nobody can afford to live off $70,000 in today's America," suggesting that tech CEOs prefer foreign workers because they could pay them less. Loomer's account on X was then suspended for 12 hours.

As X users watched the feud play out over the holiday period, a self-described Democrat named Carlos Turnbull posted: "Loomer is noticeably not saying anything about Trump also bringing in H-1B workers to staff his clubs and Trump Vineyards. Probably just an oversight."

The H-1B visa

The American Immigration Council says only 65,000 H-1B visas are awarded yearly, with 20,000 more going to people whose postgraduate studies were at US institutions.

Most of these workers are in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, otherwise known as STEM.

The H-1B visa lasts three years and can be extended for six. The employer must petition the government for it on a prospective worker's behalf, and if successful, the employer can also later choose to sponsor that worker for a Green Card: a permanent US residency. 

Currently, some 700,000 people work in the US under H-1B status. Over 85 percent of H-1B petitions received go to people of Indian (75 percent) and Chinese (12 percent) origin with Canada, South Korea and the Philippines rounding out the top 5. 

The demand for H1-B visas far outstrips the supply and studies have shown that the programme fills employment gaps. 

Trump's first administration denied a larger portion of H1-B petitions compared to President Barack Obama's administration. 

The cities with the highest number of H1-B workers are in New York, San Jose, San Francisco and Dallas. 

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[1] US President-elect Donald Trump appears to be siding with Elon Musk and other supporters in the tech industry in a dispute over immigration visas that has divided his supporters.

 

During an interview with the New York Post on Saturday, Trump praised the use of visas to allow skilled foreign workers into the United States. The issue has become a point of contention among his conservative base.

 

“I’ve always liked visas, I’ve always been in favor of visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said.