Trump backs H-1B visa programme as Musk vows to go to ‘war’ defending it

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday sided with key supporter and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the programme for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters.

Trump's remarks followed a series of social media posts from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who vowed late Friday to go to "war" to defend the visa programme for foreign tech workers.

In an interview with The New York Post, Trump hinted that he "always liked" the H1-B visa programme and used it to attract qualified foreign workers to the US mainland.

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"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great programme," he was quoted as saying.

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump added. The president-elect, however, had criticised the programme during his first term, calling H1-B visas "very bad" and "unfair" for American workers.

To ensure that only highly trained or highly paid workers were employed under the visa process, Obama also instituted the "Hire American" policy, according to The Indian Express.

Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle startup, received 724 H-1B visas this year. Musk is a naturalised US citizen who was born in South Africa. Although they can be extended or used to apply for green cards, H-1B visas are normally valid for three years.

Far-right activists sparked the incident earlier this week when they denounced Trump's appointment of Indian American venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as an AI adviser, claiming he would have a voice in the Trump administration's immigration policy.

Musk's post on X was directed at Trump's supporters and immigration hard-liners who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa programme to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas.

For the first time since businessmen Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who were named by the president-elect to head the Department of Government Efficiency, defended the foreign worker visa programme, Trump spoke up on the H1-B immigration problem.

Members of the Republican party who have pushed to limit immigration, including Steve Bannon and Nikki Haley, as well as the MAGA group have sharply criticised this.

In a post on X, Haley further added “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

The argument began earlier when Ramaswamy wrote on X that overseas workers boost the US economy. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence. 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 added.

Trump has promised to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens and severely restrict immigration.

The visa problem shows how tech executives like Musk, who have played a significant part in the presidential transition by offering advice on major policy and personnel matters, are now coming under fire from his supporters.

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In order to operate its businesses, the U.S. IT sector depends on the government's H-1B visa program to attract qualified foreign workers, a workforce that detractors claim undercuts pay for U.S. residents.

Musk has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions within American tech companies.