Musk vows ‘war’ over work visa in first row with MAGA supporters
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, vowed to go to “war” to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers amid a dispute between President-elect Donald Trump’s longtime supporters and his most recently acquired backers from the tech industry.
In a post on his social media platform X, Musk defended the visa and said it was the reason he and other “critical people” were in the US.
“I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he said.
Trump, who moved to limit the visas’ use during his first presidency, later told The New York Post he was in favour of the visa program.
“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.
Musk, a naturalised US citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, 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.
Musk’s tweet was directed at Trump’s supporters and immigration hardliners, who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought to the country on work visas.
In the past, Trump has expressed a willingness to provide more work visas to skilled workers.
He has also 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 became one of Trump’s main backers during his election campaign. (AP: Evan Vucci)
The 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.
The US tech industry relies on the government’s H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, and comprises a labour force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.
The altercation was set off this week by far-right activists who criticised Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence.
They said Mr Krishnan would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
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.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Musk has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected president in November.
He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions within American tech companies.
Reuters
