President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he supports a visa program used to bring skilled foreign workers to the U.S., a position that appears to put him in Elon Musk’s corner in a MAGA debate over immigration.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I’ve always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told the New York Post.
His comments came amid an online feud between Musk, who favors using H-1B visas to fill tech industry jobs, and Trump’s far-right supporters who have tried to curb legal and illegal immigration.
As a businessman, Trump has praised the visa program. “I have a lot of H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told the New York Post. “I always believed in H-1B. I’ve used it many times. It’s a great program.”
As a politician he has been criticized for it. In a 2016 primary debate, Trump called the program “very bad” and “unfair” for American workers, The Associated Press reported. Three months after taking office, he issued an executive order that mandated changes to ensure that H-1B visas were awarded to the highest paid or most skilled applicants. He has previously said the visas were used by tech companies to hire foreign workers at lower wages.
In 2020, Trump’s administration tried to sharply restrict visas, a move officials said was prompted by pandemic-related job losses, according to The Associated Press. New rules aimed to limit those who could obtain work visas and place additional salary requirements on companies seeking to hire foreign workers.
But Trump appears to have used the H-2B visa program in his properties more often than the H-1B program, The New York Times reported. H-2B visas allow unskilled workers such as gardeners and housekeepers to work in the US for ten months, while the H-1B program allows skilled workers such as software engineers to stay for up to three years. Trump’s team did not clarify which program he was referring to in his interview with the New York Post, the Times reported.
Trump’s interview also did not appear to answer questions about whether he would pursue changes to the visa program when he takes office on January 20, The Associated Press reported.
Musk, a native of South Africa and a naturalized U.S. citizen, said the reason he and others who built SpaceX and Tesla are in the U.S. is because of the H-1B program, CNBC reported.
He was accused of censoring critics as the debate raged on X, his social media platform. More than a dozen conservatives said their blue badge verification was revoked after criticizing his views on immigration, CNBC reported.
