Bannon vs. Musk: How Trump’s U-turn on H-1B Visas Divided MAGA | News about Donald Trump
Days before Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, a feud erupted between his tech allies and proponents of his far-right MAGA (Make America Great Again) agenda over H-1B visas.
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon accused Elon Musk of trying to establish “techno-feudalism on a global scale” in fresh side against a billionaire businessman this week.
Bannon’s harsh rhetoric against the controversial visa program, which allows the hiring of highly skilled technology workers from abroad, came as others in Trump’s orbit, such as entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, also tried to argue that American companies need skilled foreign workers.
That argument has come under fire from not only Bannon, but other far-right Trump supporters — though Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with cutting government spending in his new administration, have now softened their stance on H-1B visas. After the backlash, tech barons said the program needed to be reformed.
But what is the H-1B scheme that divides Trump’s allies? Why is it so divided? Has Trump’s own turn on the issue contributed to tensions within the MAGA movement? And how will Trump manage the divide between his MAGA base and Big Tech — a sector that has traditionally leaned Democratic but has all but bent over backwards in recent weeks to appease the incoming president?
Did Trump get H-1B visas wrong?
The H-1B is a temporary and nonimmigrant US visa that allows companies in the US to bring in highly skilled workers from abroad.
In 2016, Trump called the program, which was introduced in the 1990s under Republican President George HW Bush, “very, very bad” for American workers.
A few months before the end of his first term as president in 2020, Trump imposed a temporary ban on H-1B visas, which was later overturned by a federal court.
But less than five years later, the US president-elect threw his weight behind the visa scheme, saying: “It’s a great program.”
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I believed in H-1B,” he told the New York Post.
The comments came as Musk faced opposition from MAGA supporters.
Musk played a key role in Trump’s victory as he pumped money into the presidential campaign and used X to push hard-line MAGA views. This earned him Trump’s favor and influence.
But Trump dismissed the idea that Musk enjoys enormous influence. “And no, he’s not going to take over the presidency,” Trump commented during a speech in December, days after the Tesla owner led efforts to defeat the spending bill in Congress.
Experts say Trump will have to strike a delicate balance between the Silicon Valley elite, which he needs for his job creation plans, and the MAGA base, from which he draws political support.
What is an H-1B visa – and which companies make the most money?
The H-1B is the “largest temporary work visa program” in the U.S., said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
There is an annual cap on the number of guaranteed H-1B visas, set at 65,000 H-1B visas per fiscal year. It is decided by a lottery system, which randomly selects when the number of visa applications exceeds the limit.
A foreign worker must be employed in a specialized occupation with at least a bachelor’s degree. The employer sponsors foreign workers in the fields of IT, medicine and publishing. The visa is issued for three years, but can be extended to six years.
American and Indian technology companies – and a few consulting firms – dominate the scheme. Six of the 10 biggest beneficiaries of the scheme in 2024 were US companies, according to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a non-partisan think tank on trade and immigration: Amazon, Cognizant, IBM, Microsoft, Google and Meta. Three are Indian: Infosys, TCS and HCL. Capgemini, a French technology and consulting firm, rounds out the list.
But according to NFAP data, there is another big new beneficiary of the scheme: Musk’s electric car giant Tesla. In 2024, Tesla won 742 new H-1B visas through the lottery, more than double the 328 it secured in 2023. In addition, Tesla extended another 1,025 existing H-1B visas in 2024.
“Due to data limitations, we do not have a good sense of the total number of H-1B visa holders currently in the US. However, as of 2019, close to 600,000 highly skilled immigrants were working in the U.S. economy on H-1B visas. Approximately 120,000 immigrant workers received new H-1B visas in 2024,” said Batalova.
However, it is not just MAGA advocates who are critical of the scheme.
Ronil Hira, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, said the H-1B program needs to be reformed. Problems plaguing the program, he said, include a poor selection process, where “eligibility standards are too low, so the lottery is flooded with applications” and “visa winners are chosen by lottery instead of rational criteria.”
What is the argument about the H-1B visa?
The recent debate began when far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer criticized Trump’s choice for artificial intelligence (AI) adviser, Sriram Krishnan, who argued that the US needs more foreign skilled workers to remain competitive in technology industries.
On December 28, Musk threatened to “go to war” on the issue.
“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that have made America strong is H-1B,” Musk announced.
Musk was born in South Africa and previously held an H-1B visa before becoming a naturalized US citizen.
Ramaswamy jumped into the debate by saying that tech companies hire foreign-born employees because of the cultural difference.
“A culture that celebrates prom queens instead of math Olympiad champions, or athletes instead of high school seniors, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote, without mentioning the H-1B visa.
But he later clarified that the H-1B system is “very broken [and] should be replaced”.
Bannon, who served in Trump’s previous term, called the H-1B program “a total fraud” because it allows tech companies to bring in cheap labor from overseas at the cost of American workers. He called for the deportation of H-1B visa holders as part of broader deportation plans.
He particularly lashed out at Musk, saying that “the only goal of Tesla owners is to become a trillionaire. That’s his goal,” Bannon he told an Italian newspaperCorriere della Sera, January 8
“He will do anything related to make sure that any of his companies are protected or that he has a better job or makes more money. His amassing of wealth and then – through wealth – power: that’s what he’s focused on. American working people in this country will not tolerate that.”
Batalova explained that immigration has long been a contentious political area in the US. There are “two existential perspectives fighting for the hearts and minds of the American public and voters,” she said.
She explained that one perspective sees immigrant workers, such as those on H-1B visas, as contributors to America’s economic power and global competitiveness. Another perspective sees immigrant workers as competitors for jobs and limited economic resources.
Batalova added that this fight has resurfaced at this moment and that “it is largely fueled by voter dissatisfaction with the way the government handled immigration after the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by discussions about economic security and national competitiveness, especially in relation to China “.
“Major technology companies and business groups continue to lobby to expand the program, arguing that it is critical to maintaining America’s innovative edge. However, layoffs in the technology sector, combined with instances of worker turnover at various companies, have provided ammunition for H-1B critics.”
Who else criticized H-1B?
Criticism of the H-1B visa has also come from the left.
On December 29, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna told Fox News that H-1B needs to be reformed.
“You can’t underpay these H-1B people who are coming in,” Khanna said. The program “should not be for accountants or entry-level IT jobs. It really should be for exceptional talent. We should have that balance”.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also criticized the H-1B visa program. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire the ‘best and brightest,’ but to replace high-paying American jobs with low-paid foreign workers,” he posted on X.
Elon Musk is wrong.
The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire the “best and brightest,” but to replace high-paying American jobs with low-paid foreign workers.
The cheaper labor they employ, the more billionaires earn. pic.twitter.com/Mwz7i9TcSM
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 2, 2025
Who are H-1B visa holders?
About 70 percent of H-1B visa recipients are from India, and another 10 percent are from China.
As the debate rages in the US, some tech companies have withdrawn job offers to Indian workers, according to a report in the Times of India.
But India’s Ministry of External Affairs argued that H-1B visas benefit both countries.
“India-US economic ties benefit greatly from the technical expertise provided by skilled professionals, with both sides leveraging their strengths and competitive advantage. We look forward to further deepening India-US economic ties, which are to our mutual benefit,” Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said during a press conference on January 3.
Has Trump gone soft on other immigration issues?
Trump’s campaign promises during the election consisted of a hard-line immigration policy. He has threatened to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and increase border security to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country.
A month after he was voted out, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker on an episode of Meet the Press that he plans to end birthright citizenship in the US, a policy that has been in place for more than 150 years. The right is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
However, during an interview, the president-elect said he was willing to work with Democrats to keep it “Dreamers”undocumented people who arrived in the US as children and have lived in the country most of their lives.
When it comes to the H-1B visa in Trump’s second term, “nobody knows what Trump is going to do. In his first term, he did nothing even though he advocated reform of the program. It was clearly an unfulfilled promise,” said Hira of Howard University.
“Republicans control Congress [both House and Senate] and the White House, so they have the power to change the program for better or for worse, or maintain the status quo. Will he use that power to make a difference? Internal political calculations will dictate the direction they will take.”
