Remarks follow social media posts from Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who vowed to go to ‘war’ to defend program
Summary
Donald Trump publicly supported Elon Musk’s defense of the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign tech workers, despite opposition from some of his far-right supporters.
The debate was reignited after Trump appointed Indian-American AI expert Sriram Krishnan as an adviser, sparking criticism from immigration hard-liners.
Musk, a former H-1B holder, argued the program is essential for U.S. tech, while critics like Steve Bannon claim it undercuts American wages.
This stance marks a shift from Trump’s earlier policies limiting H-1B visas, highlighting tensions within his base over immigration policy.
He was legal later, when he finally got that h1b. At the beginning he was on a student visa that he very illegally overstayed, then paid to have things fixed.
H1B employees are so valuable to these people because they can be bullied into working for less, working longer and threatened with deportation if they don't comply and keep their mouth shut.
Exploitation is the only reason for this.
all immigration is a net benefit, I've been waiting to see how, like every other right wing govt in the history of history, this one pretends they hate immigrants while not doing anything about it in a way that looks like they are doing something about it.
Alright guys, where are the Q-anon like conspiracy theories on how DT is locked in some corpo-state dungeon under a drug store in Toomer’s corner while Elon, Bezos, et al. have replaced him with an AI-like puppet?
Cuz y’all need to get in on this quick while the gettin’s good.
I'm torn on this, I hate Bannon, but in the extreme right wing neo national socialism thinking he is consistent. And while he has power, it's contained to some degree.
But I think I hate Musk even more, despite the fact he acknowledges that america can't thrive alone. His basically unlimited power is a very big problem for the whole world.
Fuck these fascists. This is not just about Musk's greed. All these sycophants around Trump obviously want so much more than money. They want unlimited unregulated power, immortality, a white patriarchal supremacist ethnostate. They're setting up an Authoritarian Kyriarchical Totalitarian regime. An overt American Empire.
The terrifying part about all of this is that this infighting, while perhaps entertaining to witness, is ultimately a display of monarchy forming in America, a monarchy that a significant portion of Americans apparently are willing to usher in for the sake of relieving economic hardship.
In my view, this is because the power structures left in place by unfettered, unregulated capitalism have so neutered the power of the populace and stripped them of access to knowledge (and nearly everything else) that they are left with only a facade of choice every four years. They are left voting with their wallets or with their hate, because they are generally aware their vote means little more than delaying or accelerating the decline into fascism.
We all know this is only the beginning. As the pawns and knights and rooks jockey for position around Trump, eventually a concentrated mass of the most sycophantic and power hungry will be the ones left surrounding him. And Trump gives less than two shits about competency and all the shits about subservience.
After this jockeying for power has settled, it is likely the explicit and overt Empire building can begin, and the end of the world might very well transpire thereafter.
Well, there it is. The one fucking policy decision Trump made his first term that I agreed with and could point to as "see? I don't hate everything Trump does just because he's Trump," was his reduction of H1B visas.
Now I guess I can officially say I hate every single Trump policy. There is no silver lining. He makes the wrong decision every time.
The problem with tech workers isn't there aren't enough Americans willing or able to do the work, it's that we bring in essentially indentured servants instead of just educating our own people and paying them. H1B visas are supposed to be the stopgap, not the solution.
But they want stupid American consumers and voters and cheap and capable foreign worker drones. It's disgusting the way the wealthy feed off of America like a pig trough.
Great, get rid of the immigrants who work at backbreaking, starvation wage jobs to keep food prices low and import H1B immigrants who will take all those good paying jobs.
In my country the far right distinguishes between legal immigrantes, who are cannon fodder for exploitative industry and therefore good, and illegal immigrants, who are criminals and need to be segregated in detection camps.
Both types in any case ar discouraged from marrying the locals (public officers are resistant) and prevented from practicing their religion in public by local legislation (the national one is vague).
For one time I feel my country is ahead of the US 🤣😅😭 maybe it is because we invented fas**sm after all.
I think they are trying to flood the market with cheaper foreign workers that business owners have more control over so they can lower the wages of everyone else. More Americans will be out of work as they are replace by H1Bs. They'll have to accept lower pay and less benefits to continue in tech or switch careers which is hard. The H1Bs will eventually be hated especially among MAGA and it won't be their fault as they are just pawns in this Lex Luther wannabe's world view. The quality of software will drop because you get what you pay for. Maybe Trump or Musk will do something stupid and piss off India (maybe a tariff or trade war) and I assume the Indians worldwide will side with India mostly which can lead to more compromises in our critical software.
So I think it will be like when manufacturing jobs were shipped to China and look how that turned out for American workers, goods, and security.
Maybe. They're supposed to show that they can't find a domestic worker to do the same job, regardless of pay. I don't know how often that's audited, though.
The H1B system is very flawed, but cutting them down is not the answer. Now I don't trust the Trump administration to take productive steps towards fixing the system, and it'll probably be heavily abused but at least it's not ceding ground to MAGA.
Depends on if you're a MAGA faithful or not. Because those are the folks that expect now that their votes mean nothing to him, to somehow still be important.