US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech barons such as Elon Musk, saying that he backs a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country.
“I’ve always liked the [H1-B] visas, I have always been in favor of the visas, that’s why we have them” at Trump-owned facilities, he told the New York Post in his first public comments on the matter since it flared up this week.
An angry back-and-forth, largely between Silicon Valley’s Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump backers, has erupted in fiery fashion, with Musk even vowing to “go to war” over the issue.
Photo: AFP
Trump’s insistent calls for sharp curbs on immigration were central to his election victory last month over US President Joe Biden. Trump has vowed to deport all undocumented immigrants and limit legal immigration.
However, tech entrepreneurs such as Tesla’s Musk — as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, who is set to join Musk in cochairing a government cost-cutting panel — say the US produces too few highly skilled graduates, and they fervently champion the H1-B program.
Musk, who migrated from South Africa on an H1-B, on Thursday wrote on his X platform that luring elite engineering talent from abroad was “essential for America to keep winning.”
Adding acrimony to the debate was a post from Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants from India, who deplored an “American culture” that he said venerates mediocrity, adding that the US risks having “our asses handed to us by China.”
That angered several prominent conservatives who were backing Trump long before Musk noisily joined their cause this year, pumping more than US$250 million into the Republican’s campaign.
“Looking forward to the inevitable divorce between President Trump and Big Tech,” said Laura Loomer, a far-right Make America Great Again (MAGA) figure known for her conspiracy theories, who often flew with Trump on his campaign plane. “We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats.”
She and others said Trump should be promoting US workers and further limiting immigration.
Musk, who had already infuriated some Republicans after leading an online campaign that helped tank a bipartisan budget deal last week, fired back at his critics.
Writing on X, he warned of a “MAGA civil war” over the visas, which he said were critical “for those who want America to win.”
Musk swore at one critic, adding that “I will go to war on this issue.”
That, in turn, drew a volley from Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who wrote on the Gettr platform that the H1-B program brings in migrants who are essentially “indentured servants” working for less than US citizens would.
In a striking jab at Trump’s close friend Musk, Bannon called the Tesla CEO a “toddler.”
Some of Trump’s original backers say they fear he is falling under the sway of big donors from the tech world and drifting away from his campaign promises.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump’s remarks might soothe the intraparty strife, which has exposed just how contentious changing the immigration system might be once he takes office next month.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS