Donald Trump supporters divided after Elon Musk, tech allies back foreign tech workers over Americans
Loomer assailed previous comments by Krishnan advocating for increased access to green cards and skilled worker visas, calling it antithetical to Trump’s “America First” stance.
That prompted pushback from Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who argued that US companies needed to recruit top talent from across the world to remain competitive.
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Musk, a naturalised US citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa himself, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for green cards.
But critics have said they undercut US citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated.
Musk’s tweeted at Trump’s supporters and immigration hardliners who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped.
“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 H-1B.”
Vivek Ramaswamy said he believes American culture suffers from mediocrity. Credit: AP
“I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he added.
Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tapped along with Musk to run a government efficiency initiative, also weighed in. He drew particular attention for a post arguing that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence” – which infuriated Trump’s MAGA-base.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilisation.
“H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages.”
“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ’em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,” Bannon added.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Trump has promised to deport all immigrants who are in the US illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens and severely restrict immigration.
Musk comments on German politics
The visa issue highlights how tech leaders like Musk – who has taken an important role in the presidential transition, advising on key personnel and policy areas – are now drawing scrutiny from his base.
Musk has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions within American tech companies.
In another move by the controversial billionaire, Musk backed Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a guest opinion piece for Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper published online on Saturday that prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.
In the commentary, published in German by the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, Musk expanded on his post on social media platform X last week claiming that “only the AfD can save Germany”.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD at the national level as a suspected extremism case since 2021.
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Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, wrote on X that she had submitted her resignation, with a link to the commentary.
The AfD backing from Musk, who also defended his right to weigh in on German politics due to his “significant investments,” comes as Germans are set to vote on February 23 after a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed.
The AfD is running second in opinion polls and might be able to thwart either a centre-right or centre-left majority, but Germany’s mainstream, more centrist parties have pledged to shun any support from the AfD at national level.
Bloomberg, AP, Reuters
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