This is one of the first bones of contention among Donald Trump's supporters. Saturday, December 28, the elected president of the United States, who had led a firmly anti-immigration campaign, said he was in favor of maintaining visas for specialized workers, in an interview with New York Post. Two weeks before his inauguration, this question has revealed strong differences among his supporters, between the most conservative Republicans and more liberal figures from the world of business and tech, such as Elon Musk.
The debate which is agitating the Trumpist camp finds its source in the announcement, on December 22, of the appointment of the investor Sriram Krishnan as future advisor to Donald Trump in charge of artificial intelligence. Several Republican activists, such as conservative influencer Laura Loomer, have accused him of wanting to relax immigration conditions in the United States. Indian-American, Sriram Krishnan has also been the target of racist attacks on social networks, leading Elon Musk to denounce on “those within the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists.”
Basically, the discussions focused on the H-1B visa, which allows companies to bring foreign workers with high qualifications to the United States to practice a specialized profession, work as a researcher for the Ministry of Defense or even do some modeling. This temporary residence permit is generally issued for a period of three years, which can be extended up to six years.
Sesame is widely used by Silicon Valley, and Elon Musk is a fervent defender of the possibility of using qualified foreign labor. The boss of Tesla, Space X and the social network X was himself born in South Africa before immigrating to the United States, then being naturalized. “Bringing the top 0.1% of engineering talent through legal immigration is essential for America to keep winning.” on the international scene, the future Minister of Government Efficiency wrote on X on Thursday.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who shares with Elon Musk this mission to slash state spending, also defended the use of foreign workers. “Our American culture has worshiped mediocrity over excellence for far too long.”he said Thursday on X. Without radical change, “we are going to get our ass kicked by China”.
A speech that disturbs certain conservative figures, while Donald Trump was elected on the basis of a virulent and sometimes racist speech on the subject of immigrants. Steve Bannon, a far-right polemicist whom he advised during his first term, lambasted Friday in his podcast “War Room” a “scam by Silicon Valley oligarchs to take jobs from American citizens”.
More subtly, the next deputy chief of staff at the White House, Stephen Miller, reproduced on X a speech given by Donald Trump in 2020, in which he marveled at the “culture” American who has “mastered electricity, split the atom, gave the world the telephone and the internet”. The one who was then president had listed and applauded around ten American personalities, emphasizing that “only America could have produced them all”.
In the past, Donald Trump had repeatedly criticized H-1B visas in the name of his slogan “America first” (“America First”), here applied to the labor market. During his first campaign for the White House in 2016, the real estate mogul admitted to having used these visas himself, while describing them as “very unfair” for American workers. Once elected, he restricted the process of obtaining the H-1B, before suspending it in 2020, just like other types of residence permits. A measure which caused an outcry in Silicon Valley, before being canceled by the administration of his Democratic successor, Joe Biden.
Since then, Donald Trump seems to have changed his mind on the issue. “I have many H-1B visas in my properties, I believe in this visa, it’s a great program”he declared in his interview with New York Post Saturday, ignoring his past positions, without specifying whether or not he intended to reform the visa system for foreign workers. Elon Musk said on Saturday that he himself wanted “a major reform” of the H-1B visa, in particular by increasing its cost for the employer.
Some Republicans see in this turnaround the growing influence of Donald Trump's new allies, from the business world. “We welcomed the tech guys when they came running towards us. (…) We did not ask them to design a migration policy”criticized Matt Gaetz, formerly elected to Congress, once designated by Donald Trump as future Minister of Justice before having to give up. When Elon Musk almost single-handedly torpedoed a budget agreement in Congress aimed at avoiding a “shutdown”, some Democrats joked about the weight of the “President Musk”with which Donald Trump would ultimately be reduced to the role of spectator.
