Billionaire Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump’s chief financier, on Wednesday sparked MAGA backlash after defending visas for foreign tech workers.
South African-born Elon Musk was once an immigrant to the U.S., illegally overstaying his visa to build a future here. He employs hundreds of foreign-born engineers at his Tesla and SpaceX companies and says they fill a shortage of American-born workers.
Musk called a shortage of “excellent engineering talent” a “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley” in a Wednesday tweet, arguing that immigrant labor is an essential ingredient in American innovation and warning of a “dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
“If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story,” Musk replied to critics.
But his plea for more immigrant talent has triggered some of Trump’s right-wing supporters.
“There are over 330 million people in America. Surely, there must be enough among them to build your ultimate team?” an X user wrote in a top reply to Musk. “Why would you deny real Americans that opportunity by bringing foreigners here?”
Laura Loomer, a close ally of Trump’s with a history of racist comments, denied the suggestion that the U.S. needed skilled immigrant laborers.
“Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India,” Loomer tweeted on Tuesday. “We didn’t create it so that it could be exploited by pro open border techies.”
Musk’s companies rely on immigration policies that vastly differ from those pushed by MAGA. Per a Forbes review of Tesla filings, the automaker sponsored 742 workers for H1-B visas, a class of visa for specialized workers with a 2.5% rejection rate in 2024, down from Trump administration rates of 24% in 2018 and 21% in 2019.
Musk is among a small cohort of voices inside Trump’s inner circle combatting the MAGA nativist narrative. Sriram Krishnan, Trump’s incoming policy advisor on artificial intelligence, previously called for an end to caps on green cards.
Still, Musk’s rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers, and other immigrants has been particularly virulent, racking up hundreds of millions of views on X.
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