President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.
“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,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in his first administration and has been critical of the program in the past.
Musk and other tech barons argued this week that the H-1B visa program is critical to ensuring American companies can find highly skilled labor which may not be easily available in the U.S. labor force and must be expanded.
MAGA hardliners want Trump to follow through with his promise to promote US workers and impose tougher restrictions on immigration.
Trump’s Saturday comments come a day after Musk vowed to go to “war” on the issue, telling one mocking opponent to go “f–k yourself.”
The flare-up happened after X user Steven Mackey jabbed the billionaire’s defense of the program by using the billionaire’s own words against him.
“Stop trying to optimize something that shouldn’t exist,” a line often used by Musk, Mackey wrote. “Let’s optimize H-1B,” he sarcastically added.
Musk fired back: “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.”
Here’s a proposal on how the Trump administration can institute H-1B reform without congress through formal rule-making (congress should work on reform too, or, quite frankly, just gut the entire program):
1. Tighten the definition regarding "specialty occupations"
2. Raise the lowest prevailing wage level to the 75th percentile for the occupation and local area
3. Require companies that LEASE H-1Bs from Indian IT outsourcing firms to also have to file for H-1B visas petitions for each worker they lease
4. Establish proper employer-employee relationship: maintaining a clear employ… Read more
We have multiple H-1B visa and green card employees in the area where I work. A few are stellar. A few are average and the rest are not so great. When we had a round of layoffs earlier this year, I was forced to layoff two American citizens and not one of the less than desirable H-1Bs.
There should also be a law that requires the H-1B workforce to be targeted first in any layoffs.
So you would lay off a person who is a better performer solely based on their immigration status? That could run afoul of the civil rights act and probably the equal protection clause. Descendants of immigrants in the last 150 years calling for this are full of **** !
@Activ1stJasmineConstitution9mos9MO
There are so many tech workers that can’t speak out on this because they’re still in their jobs but I know they would agree your last paragraph should be prioritized first when Trump takes office.
@BureaucratNoraRepublican9mos9MO
No! There’s still a lot of room for fraud for Indian consultancy firms to commit fraud! The money Indian consultancies put to save and run their **** is in billions with B! EndH1-b for god’s sake!
@5M8D9FSClassical Liberalism9mos9MO
Media liberals still can't comprehend that Trump supporters -- whom they have relentlessly depicted as a blindly loyal leader-worshipping fascist cult -- have actual ideological and policy differences they air.
It's Democrats who march in lockstep with virtually no dissent.
@UniqueM4jorityGreen9mos9MO
It’s an incredible contrast to watching Walt Disney’s grandniece and the LinkedIn guy unilaterally expel the elected party nominee and install someone that no one voted for. All without a single voter being even a little upset about it
@5M8D9FS9mos9MO
Yes, Dem Party elites ordered their followers to cheer when they selected a candidate to be the nominee who never got a single vote for that and was viewed as a national joke.
And with few exceptions, they immediately put coconut emojis on their foreheads, swooned, and drooled.
@Gr4ssrootsCordialSocialist9mos9MO
They are used to it at this point. They cheered the efforts to block whole state primary’s when anyone with a whisker of potential mentioned opposing Biden.
@HumbleDotterelGreen9mos9MO
The Democrat-friendly media meme’d Brat Summer into reality and untold millions of Democrats just went along with it without question.
Harris went from being a somewhat obscure VP that even some Democrats acknowledged shouldn’t have been picked to the second coming of Barack Obama, plus female.
@B27PMYZ9mos9MO
We should stop importing indians.
@8KFZ38XSocial Justice9mos9MO
JD Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" is also a searing critique of lower-middle class cultural mores. According to Vance, "Greater Appalachia" fosters "a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it," and he didn't think any public policy "solutions" could conceivably address the problem.
This is consistent with Vivek's present view. Vance says in Appalachia, "Too many young men" are "immune to hard work," and there's "a willingness to blame everyone but yourself" for economi… Read more
While I like the openness of right wing debates you don’t actually see a lot of Republican members of Congress engaging. So maybe it’s not as open as it’s presumed.
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