Trump says he’s a believer in H-1B visas

Quashes opposition to the programme for qualified professionals to work in the US that pitted right-wing fringe against Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy

New York: President-elect Donald Trump has declared that he is a “believer in H-1B” visas, quashing the opposition to the programme for qualified professionals to work in the US that pitted the right-wing fringe against his advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

“It’s a great programme,” he told the New York Post in a phone interview on Saturday. He said, “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them. I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times.”

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Trump has supported reforming the immigration system to make it merit-based, adopting a points system like Canada’s or Australia’s that gives weight to academic and employable qualifications.

He has said that he wanted foreign students graduating from US universities to get green cards with their diplomas. He reiterated it during his campaign this year: “What I want to do, and what I will do, is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country.”

The differences over H1-B visas and the immigration of highly qualified persons boiled over among Trump’s loyalists after he appointed Sriram Krishnan, an Indian immigrant, as his artificial intelligence adviser.

One of the first salvos was fired by Laura Loomer, a far-right Trump supporter in the base of his loyalists known as the MAGA, an acronym for Trump’s rallying cry of ‘Make America Great Again’.

She posted on X, “Deeply disturbing to see the appointment of Sriram Krishnan” and accused him of wanting to remove all restrictions on the number of green cards, which give permanent resident immigration status.

David Sacks, whom Trump has named the Crypto and AI Czar and would be Krishnan’s boss, pointed out on X that he had only suggested removing the limits on green cards that can be given to individual countries while keeping the overall limits so that unused green cards can be distributed to those with huge backlogs.

And as personal attacks and false accusations flew against Krishnan, Sacks again came to his defence writing on X that “the lies just shifted, including to some nasty attacks” on him.

Musk took a personal approach, posting on X, “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 H-1B.”

He warned that the US would “LOSE” without attracting the world’s best talent. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” he wrote on X.

“If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE,” he wrote and challenged the critics, asking if they wanted the US to win or lose.

Defending the programmes for bringing talented immigrants to the US, Ramaswamy said US corporations looked elsewhere for talent because of a culture of mediocrity among Americans. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” he wrote on X.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture,” he said.

He went on to list factors like the acclaim sports and entertainment figures receive compared to science and tech achievers and the scorn studious students face.

As the temperature rose with more attacks on the H1-B visa-holders and merit-based green card recipients, Musk threatened a critic in an obscenity-laden post: “Take a big step back and **** YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Indians are by far the biggest recipients of H-1B visas, getting 72.3 per cent of them last year. While the opposition from the MAGA-right to Indians coming in on H-1B visas and as immigrants on professional visas has taken the headlines, there has always been opposition to them verging on racism from the Left in the Democratic Party on the argument that they depress wages for US-born citizens and take their jobs.