Trump for H1B Visa: Defends Musk and Vivek

President-elect Donald Trump on defended the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, architects of his DOGE entity, on expanding the current H1B Visa programme to highly skilled foreign workers to immigrate to the US turning the tide against the MAGA backlash triggered by GOP conservatives.
Making his first comments on an issue that has divided his supporters.
Trump said in an interview with The New York Post that he’s “a believer in H-1B,” referring to the visas granted to thousands of foreign workers who immigrate to the US to fill specialized jobs.

In his first term, Trump had restricted access to foreign worker visas and had previously criticized the program. But during the 2024 campaign, Trump signalled openness to giving some foreign-born workers legal status if they graduated from a US university.
“I’ve always liked the visas; I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them,” 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 said.
Trump’s comments demonstrate which way the wind is blowing, Musk’s, his biggest campaign contributor at a quarter of a billion dollars. This is the first time Trump has weighed in on the issue since entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tapped to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, defended the foreign worker visa program, igniting sharp criticism from MAGA loyalists who want to restrict immigration over favouring local American techies.
The Silicon Valley already has a huge percentage of H1-B workers on their high-tech programmes including the new applications for AI in healthcare, logistics, and other spheres of the staggering US’s economy.
Vivek Ramaswamy, whose family immigrated to the USA, is a billionaire building his fortunes on a biotech firm and ran for the presidency in 2024 on the Republican prospect and later withdrew supporting Trump. He is an ultraloyalist of Trump.
Recently he walked into a firestorm when he said America needed to double the number of engineers it has. “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence: he said in Défense of expanding the H1B program and allowing more foreign workers to come in and work in the USA.
Over this week, Musk has strongly defended the H-1B visas in social media posts, arguing for their importance in allowing tech companies — including his own — to grow their businesses. In a post Friday, Musk said he will “go to war” to protect access to H-1B visas.
“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 H1B,” the tech mogul wrote.

“I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. “Musk, who was born in South Africa and obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother, came to the US as a foreign student and later worked on an H-1B visa.
Musk and Ramaswamy have found their ideas on expanding the foreign worker visas meeting with a strong pushback from the anti-immigration supporters in Trump’s coalition. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon called H-1B visas a “scam” on an episode of his podcast Saturday, joining a vocal contingent of loyal Trump supporters that includes former Rep. Matt Gaetz and far-right provocateur Laura Loomer.
The H-1B visa program allows 65,000 highly skilled workers to immigrate to the US each year to fill specific jobs 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.
Trump had previously opposed the H-1B visa program as part of his platform to encourage US companies to prioritize American labor over hiring foreign workers. During his 2016 campaign, Trump accused US companies of using H-1B visas “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 his administration’s effort to curb legal immigration while responding to the changing economic conditions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump’s comments siding with Musk represents another instance of the president-elect growing closer to the tech mogul. On Friday, the president-elect posted on social media a private message apparently intended for Musk asking when he plans to pay another visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump is being supported by some of the magnificent seven tech Moghuls such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zukerberg of Facebook Meta. Other billionaires are also in line with Trump such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, both of whom support the H1-B visa program. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who faced a ban on exporting semiconductors to China during Joe Biden’s time, is also on Trump’s side reportedly favouring expansion of the H1-B program.

It now remains to be seen how any expansion of the H1-B program carries through the Congress given the reservations and opposition from ultra-loyalist Republicans in the GOP. If passed it would benefit thousands of workers working in various high-tech sectors contributing to America’s progress and prosperity to get in the queue for their Green Cards, or permanent residency besides allowing for more workers from overseas.
The technology sector usually attracts hordes of graduates and postgraduates from China, India and the Philippines every year to come into the USA on H1-B visas to work, experienced workers from India also enter on L1 visas and J1 visas whose progression to the Green Card is fast tracked.

Source : Inputs from CNN.