(NBC News) A multiday firestorm has erupted over comments made by two incoming advisers to President-elect Donald Trump about H-1B temporary worker visas, a carve-out for high-skilled workers who some in the MAGA world say are taking American jobs.
The fight began brewing on X ahead of Christmas after Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to a top artificial intelligence policy post, triggering a racially charged backlash that surfaced Krishnan’s comments advocating for green cards for skilled workers.
The backlash escalated Thursday, when Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” attributing this as one reason for the influx of foreign tech workers. Ramaswamy, who is Indian American, went on to say he hopes Trump’s presidency can start an American culture that prioritizes “hard work over laziness.” Tech executives have called for greater access to the widely used immigration visa, arguing that it is necessary to fill high-skilled tech and other specialized jobs.
Trump adviser Elon Musk, with whom Ramaswamy is a co-leader of Trump’s incoming Department of Government Efficiency, had posted Thursday on X in response to a tweet about a shortage of skilled workers in Silicon Valley that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” Musk, who was born in South Africa and is a naturalized American citizen, urged people to think “of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”
The posts by the two generated backlash among ardent MAGA supporters who want a hard-line approach to all forms of immigration, and exposed a chasm in the relationship with a right-wing faction of some of Trump’s closest allies and advisers from the tech sector.
The rift between anti-immigration MAGA loyalists and pro-immigration tech billionaires and executives also marks one of the biggest post-election fights within Trump’s coalition, and came just days after Musk instigated a major battle over the federal budget that nearly led to a government shutdown.
“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” Steve Bannon said on his “War Room” show Friday morning, calling many of the arguments in favor of H-1Bs a “total scam.”
Trump transition spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During the campaign, Trump sent mixed signals on skilled worker immigration. He said on a tech industry podcast in June that noncitizens in the U.S. should “automatically” get green cards when they graduate from college, but his campaign said he was referring only to “the most skilled graduates” who are “the most thoroughly vetted.”
Conservative commentator Mike Cernovich was among those who responded to Ramaswamy’s post on Thursday, replying that “the Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B’s. Then why did everyone want to come here?”
Some attempted to broker agreement between the factions, with venture capitalist Shaun Maguire defending Krishnan and writing that “the tech community should also hear MAGA’s points,” namely that immigrants “should be skilled AND aligned w/ American values” and fully assimilate.
Later, Cernovich shared an article on Ramaswamy more than a year ago on the campaign trail promising to “gut” the H-1B system if he were elected. Ramaswamy retweeted it.
Also on Thursday, some MAGA loyalists said Musk had begun to retaliate against them by censoring them on X, which he owns, because of their opposition to skilled immigration.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and close Trump ally, said that X had demonetized her — cutting off her ability to collect subscription fees and other revenue on the site — and had revoked her blue verification checkmark, about two days after she began criticizing Musk over tech industry visas.
“Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies,” she posted on X, calling the actions “retaliation.” Loomer has 1.4 million followers on X, and earlier in the week, she had been among the first prominent conservatives to criticize Trump’s appointment of Krishnan to an AI post.
Some other right-wing accounts including @rawsalerts, which has 1.1 million followers, also said they lost their verified status Thursday. The news account did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Musk did not respond directly to either Loomer or the others claiming censorship, but earlier in the day, he posted on X about Loomer’s anti-immigration commentary.
“Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore,” he wrote.
Later, Musk posted what he called “a reminder” on X that the site’s algorithm automatically reduces the reach of a user if they’re frequently blocked or muted by other, credible users.
“If far more credible, verified subscriber accounts (not bots) mute/block your account compared to those who like your posts, your reach will decline significantly,” Musk posted.
Musk and X did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment Friday.
Loomer also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including on whether she plans to switch platforms.
The anti-immigration backlash over Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments sparked a broader conversation about how to revive lagging American industry. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat responded that the rebirth of at least one example of “sagging” American industry “seems extremely unlikely to emerge from a test-oriented, grindset, no-sleepovers or mall-hangouts mentality.” Retweeting Ramaswamy earlier, Douthat suggested that Trump’s incoming adviser had misidentified the cause and assessed American cultural priorities and strengths inaccurately.
The dispute over high-skilled immigration in Trump world comes as the Biden administration, in its final days, published a new regulation to “modernize” the H‑1B program, set to take effect Jan. 17, just three days before Trump takes office.
Trump has promised to sign deportation orders on his first day in office, and in the latest indication of the incoming administration’s focus on immigration, his “border czar,” Tom Homan, told NBC on Thursday that “family detention, if we bring it back, it’s like, it’s on the table. We haven’t finished the plans yet.”
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