Donald Trump echoes Elon Musk on visas for foreign workers amid MAGA dispute
President-elect Donald Trump enthusiastically supported H-1B is highly coveted visa program on Saturday, allowing foreign workers in “specialty occupations” to enter the United States. Whether these visas should be maintained and increased has caused MAGA’s infighting as billionaires Elon Musk supported the program, to the chagrin of Trump’s hard-line anti-immigrant supporters.
“I always like visas, I always support visas. That’s why we have them,” Mr. Trump said. New York Post Office‘S Jon Levine.
The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire foreign workers “in specialty occupations or as fashion models.” Special occupations require visa applicants to have at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, as specified. Department of Labor. This type of visa is often used for workers in fields such as mathematics, engineering and technology – fields that are of particular benefit to CEOs like Musk, who came to the US as students. international and speak He worked use an H-1B visa.
According to report According to Forbes, based on H-1B data, Tesla, run by Musk, “is one of the top employers of foreign-born scientists and engineers in [fiscal year] 2024.” In fiscal year 2024, Tesla had 742 H-1B petitions approved for initial employment, more than double their 2023 number: 328.
Back when he first ran for president in 2016, Trump had a different view of the H-1B program, calling it “very bad for workers” and saying “we should end it.” .
“We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers. And secondly, I think it’s very important to say – well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do, and it’s sitting there waiting for you – but that sucks,” Trump said. speak at that time. “It’s very bad for business, in terms of it’s very bad for our workers. It’s unfair to our workers. And we should end it.”
In this speech and elsewhere, including in his recent interview with ParcelTrump has repeatedly affirmed that he often uses an H-1B visa at his residence. However, according to report from New York Times‘S Ken Bensinger“Trump appears to have used the H-1B visa program only sparingly,” and instead, “he is a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named but completely different,” for workers. like gardeners and housekeepers, “as well as the H-2A program for agricultural workers.” Over the past 20 years, according to federal data, Trump’s companies have received approval to hire more than 1,000 workers through these two H-2 programs.
And, a CNN review Government labor data shows that Trump’s businesses have sought to hire more foreign guest workers this year than any other year on record and have been approved to hire 209 people – including chefs, housekeepers, servers and desk clerks.
Musk, richest person in the world, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to pro-Trump political action committees in the final months of the 2024 presidential election. This week, he’s sparring with other high-profile defenders of MAGA about the visa program — hurling insults at protesters on his social media page X, formerly Twitter.
