Musk backs H-1B visas, says ‘will go to war’, asks critics to ‘take big step back’

Musk’s colourful language and weighing in — given the recent tirade against the H-1B programme from a section of Republicans — is seen as crucial since he has been an extremely close partner and confidant of Trump in the election campaign, and is also said to have an outsized influence on the Republican President-elect. Set to assume office on January 20, Trump has managed one of the biggest political comebacks in US history.

While the discourse on immigration in the US usually centres around illegal entrants via the US-Mexico border, legal ways such as the H-1B program have also come under intense scrutiny over the past week by the far right in the US. In fiscal year 2023, of the 2.65 lakh H-1B visas issued by the US, 72 per cent went to Indian nationals. During the same period, top four Indian IT majors with a presence in the US, viz., Infosys, TCS, HCL, and Wipro, obtained approval for around 20,000 employees to work on H-1B visa, as per the latest US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data.

Musk’s sharp and assertive take comes days after a controversy broke out over the H-1B visas prompted by the appointment of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in the upcoming Trump administration. Krishnan had said in November, “Anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration would be huge.”

With Krishnan favouring the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the US under the H-1B programme, right winger Laura Loomer criticised the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves.

This has reopened the debate of immigration of skilled workers, with Musk, Krishnan and fellow tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — who was a presidential candidate in the primaries before dropping out and has now been tapped by Trump to cut the size of the US government by a third — supporting the H-1B visa programme even as right-wingers have criticised it.

Immigration was an important political hot-button issue in the 2024 US presidential elections, where Trump had promised to shut down illegal immigration at the southern border and start a mass deportation effort. However, the current debate focuses on legal immigrants.

Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut US citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the programme to be eliminated, not expanded.

Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he said in a post, adding, “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.”

Trump has not said anything on the debate playing out online so far. But as a presidential candidate in 2016, he had called the H-1B visa programme “very bad” and “unfair” for US workers.

Ramaswamy, co-chair of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Musk, has blamed the lack of US-born engineers on American culture, suggesting that it has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long”.

His comments were not received well by fellow conservatives. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley slammed Ramaswamy, arguing that there is “nothing wrong with American workers or American culture”.

“All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have,” she wrote on X. “We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers,” she had said.