Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has taken a swipe at Elon Musk’s defense of the H-1B visa program, which has driven a wedge between two factions of President-elect Trump’s most ardent supporters.
Sanders, who has long argued for raising wages for workers in the U.S., criticized the wealthy tech entrepreneur’s elevation of the foreign visa system, arguing that it further enriches a handful of the nation’s richest people.
“Elon Musk is wrong,” the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist wrote in a statement released on Thursday, which he promoted on Musk’s platform, X.
“The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad,” he wrote. “The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”
Musk and Trump appear to be currently in alignment on the benefits of hiring individuals with specific technical capabilities from countries like India, arguing that there is a shortage of U.S natives with similar skills.
The program is popular with technology businesses, which use H-1B visas to help scale their companies, often more inexpensively.
But it’s come under fire in recent weeks, especially among Trump’s own working-class supporter base, who largely share the position that Sanders articulated in his statement.
The Vermont senator took aim at one of Musk’s most well known companies as an example of how relying on such programs can negatively impact workers across the country struggling to hold onto their jobs.
“If there is really a shortage of skilled tech workers in America, why did Tesla lay-off over 7,500 American workers this year — including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas — while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers?” he continued.
Sanders also used the contentious debate to push for his signature proposed minimum wage increase, which has been stagnant at $7.25 per hour.
“Bottom line,” he wrote, “It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker.”
