Trump claims he employs many people on ‘great’ H-1B visas as MAGA civil war over program grows: Live
Donald Trump has hailed the H-1B visa program for skilled workers as “great” claiming to have always been in favor of them.
Speaking to The New York Post, the president-elect sided with two of his top lieutenants, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, after they both defended the need for hiring workers from overseas in tech, engineering, and other sectors.
Ramaswamy, who will lead the outside commission known as the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Musk, blamed 1990s sitcoms for emphasizing the wrong values in U.S. workers.
“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 wrote in a post on X.
“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” Musk wrote on Wednesday on X. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.”
The “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” he later added.
Their statements triggered pushback from “America First” hardliners, including Steve Bannon. They want strict immigration control and a furious war of words erupted on social media.