How visas for skilled foreign workers are splitting MAGA in two

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other tech titans are warring with some of US President-elect Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters over immigration visas. Trump has backed Musk and praised the use of H-1B visas to bring skilled foreign workers to the United States, but the issue has become a flashpoint that is ruffling the feathers of his electoral base.

Trump chose to side with Musk in a December 28 New York Post interview in which he expressed support for immigration visas for highly skilled workers after a fierce debate that had been roiling his MAGA supporters.

But online, the claws came out. Hardline, anti-immigrant MAGA supporters came after Trump’s wealthy tech supporters over the future of H-1B visas and the foreigners who benefit from them.

Some prominent Trump supporters, like conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, said these visas were an open door to mass immigration. Others, like Musk, defended the visa program as a way to attract the “top 0.1% of engineering talent”.

Tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-chair the Trump-proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” with Musk, took the opposite stance.

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