President-elect Donald Trump has given his support to the H-1B visa program, supported by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk to much controversy.
MAGA world has been in a cold civil war this past week after Musk and his fellow Department of Government Efficiency head, Vivek Ramaswamy, both spoke of their support for the program.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said to The New York Post about the program that allows companies to hire foreign workers for specialty jobs.
“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 added.
The controversy started when Musk touted the program in response to criticism from someone on X.
“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,” he said.
“Take a big step back and F–K YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he said, using a line from the comedy movie “Tropic Thunder.”
Ramaswamy created more controversy when he supported the idea and also critiqued American culture.
Ramaswamy also said that tech companies often hire “foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans” not because of an “innate American IQ deficit,” but because of America’s culture.
“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. 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 said.
“More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’ More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’
“Fact: 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,” he said.
“More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’ More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’ Most normal American parents look skeptically at ‘those kinds of parents.’ More normal American kids view such ‘those kinds of kids’ with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he added.
CNN Republican commentator Scott Jennings came to the defense of Musk and Ramaswamy.
“Look, there’s always been a push and pull on this in the Republican Party. I think there’s a way to work this out and solve it,” Jennings said on the CNN show “The Lead.”
“I think what a lot of people would say is, Elon Musk was making this point, if you take the top 1% or the top 0.1% of the most talented engineering people from other countries, that’s perfectly fine. H-1B visas for that, they’re unique, they have unique talent, unique innovative skills, fine,” Jennings added.
“If you’re using the H-1B program to abuse it, to recruit interns, accountants, other people that easily could be recruited from the United States of America, all because you just want to do it cheaper, that’s not fine,” he said.
“So I think what a lot of people in the party want to do is eliminate the fraud in this H-1B program, retain the top engineering talent, and there’s a way to do this,” the Republican said.
“What Ramaswamy did yesterday was not a great communications exercise, and it did anger a lot of people in the president’s coalition, and I think rightfully so,” he continued.
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