President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said he supports a visa program that is used to bring skilled foreign workers to the U.S., a stance that appears to put him in the corner of Elon Musk in a MAGA debate over immigration.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told the New York Post.
His comments came amid an online feud between Musk, who supports using H-1B visas to fill jobs in the tech industry, and Trump’s hard-right supporters who have sought to curb legal and illegal immigration.
As a businessman, Trump has praised the visa program. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told the New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
As a politician, he has criticized it. In a 2016 primary debate, Trump called the program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers, The Associated Press reported. Three months after taking office, he issued an executive order that directed changes to ensure that H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants. He has previously said the visas were used by tech companies to hire foreign workers for lower pay.
In 2020, Trump’s administration sought to sharply limit the visas, a move officials said was prompted by pandemic-related job losses, per The Associated Press. New rules aimed to restrict those who could obtain a work visa and put additional salary requirements on companies seeking to hire foreign workers.
But Trump appears to have used the H-2B visa program at his properties more often than the H-1B program, The New York Times reported. H-2B visas allow unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers to work in the U.S. for 10 months, while the H-1B program lets skilled workers like software engineers remain for up to three years. Trump’s team did not clarify which program he was referring to in his interview with the New York Post, the Times reported.
Trump’s interview also did not appear to address questions about whether he would pursue changes to the visa program when he takes office Jan. 20, The Associated Press reported.
Musk, who was born in South Africa and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said the reason he and others who built SpaceX and Tesla are in the U.S. is because of the H-1B program, CNBC reported.
He has faced accusations of censoring critics as the debate raged on X, his social media platform. More than a dozen conservatives said their blue badge verification had been revoked after they criticized his views on immigration, CNBC reported.
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