Donald Trump has sided with Elon Musk in a fierce debate over immigration visas – which has seen the President-elect’s supporters divided in two.
The SpaceX founder said he would “go to war” with Maga Republicans who have criticised the H-1B visa, which allows highly educated immigrants to work in the US for up to six years.
Musk himself came to the US from South Africa on the visa in 2002, and has now vowed to kick out any “hateful, unrepentant racists” in the Republican party who oppose it.
“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” Musk wrote on X.
Donald Trump has sided with Elon Musk in a fierce debate over immigration visas
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“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” Musk wrote on X.
“Take a big step back and F**K YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
His post garnered nearly six million views within hours, triggering an immediate backlash from Trump loyalists – many with an anti-immigration stance – who have questioned his dedication to the Maga movement.
Trump has now waded in on the debate, siding with his “first buddy” Musk in praising the skilled migrant visas for bringing foreign talent to the US.
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The fierce debate kicked off when Vivek Ramaswamy said that American culture was to blame for its need to hire foreign workers
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“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told the New York Post.
The 45th president has previously criticised the scheme during his 2016 campaign, calling them “unfair for our workers”, though has now appeared to change his tune.
The fierce debate kicked off when Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been appointed as Musk’s co-chair on Trump’s new advisory board DOGE, said that American culture was to blame for its need to hire foreign workers.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers,” he said on X.
In a now deleted reply, Musk said: “That pretty much sums it up. This was eye-opening.”
Ramaswamy’s tweet prompted a fierce backlash from anti-immigration Trump supporters, with some saying Silicon Valley was stepping over the line and trying to impact immigration policy.
Elon Musk came to America from South Africa on an H-1B visaReuters
The 45th president has previously criticised the scheme during his 2016 campaign
Getty
“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender,” said congressman Matt Gaetz. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”
Conservative activist Laura Loomer claimed she was censored on X after criticising H-1B visas.
“Full censorship of my account simply because I called out H1B visas,” she posted. “This is anti-American behaviour by tech oligarchs. What happened to free speech?”
In response, Ramaswamy later clarified that he believed “the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced”.
Musk said that he wants exemptions for Maga’s anti-immigration stance for the top 0.1 per cent of foreign engineering working, which will be essential to “keep America winning”.
America is “mostly Americans”, he said, which he deems to be “re***ded”.
“It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE. If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story.”
The dispute further intensified after conservative activists criticised Trump’s appointment of Indian-born entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Musk said this criticism was “deeply disturbing”.