Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threw his weight behind H-1B visas, taking the side of Elon Musk in the squabble among conservatives over the program that allows foreigners with technical skills to temporarily work in the United States.

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post in a phone interview. He added: “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 program.”

The comments come amid an online clash that has revealed a rift in Trump’s coalition ahead of his January inauguration. Musk and other business leaders see the visa program as essential for the U.S. tech industry, but anti-immigrant hard-liners such as right-wing activist Laura Loomer and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon say the system lets companies exploit cheap foreign labor at the expense of Americans.

While Trump said he employs H-1B workers, past reporting has found he employs workers under the H-2A program, which covers temporary visas for agricultural workers, and the H-2B program, for seasonal workers in sectors such as tourism, hospitality and landscaping. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Still, Trump’s words send an important signal, said Sophie Alcorn, an attorney in Silicon Valley who specializes in business immigration.

“The president’s statement that he supports immigration and visas for highly skilled workers allows tech workers in Silicon Valley and the companies that employ them to breathe a huge sigh of relief in what has been a tumultuous several months,” Alcorn said.

[A MAGA ‘civil war’ on X between Musk and the far right over H-1B visas]

Trump’s latest statements mark an early win for tech and business leaders who have aligned themselves with him in a bid for influence in his administration. But experts said it is unlikely to be the last word on the topic from the president-elect.

Trump’s stance on H-1B visas has shifted several times over the years, belying his claim that he has “always been in favor” of them. In a March 2016 statement, for instance, he vowed to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program.”

In fact, the H-1B program continued under his first administration, although it closely scrutinized H-1B applications as part of an approach it called “extreme vetting,” making the process more onerous for workers and employers. In the final year of his first term, Trump issued an order in 2020 that temporarily blocked new visas, including H-1Bs.

“In the first Trump term, he went after H-1B,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. But Trump’s most recent presidential campaign focused on stemming illegal immigration. That stance could be a boon to Musk and other tech industry leaders, whose businesses rely on software programmers and other skilled workers in the country legally on H-1B visas.

Amazon was the largest sponsor of H-1B visas in 2024 with 9,265, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, while fellow tech giants Google, Meta, Apple and IBM all rank among the top 10. Musk, who was born in South Africa, has said that he was on an H-1B visa at one point before he became a U.S. citizen.

Although only Congress has the power to end the program, the president can change the way it is implemented, Chishti said. One idea that has been floated is to award the visas to the workers making the highest salaries, rather than by lottery - a change that would probably benefit large tech companies.

But Trump’s comments on Saturday, in which he appeared to conflate H-1B visas with the H-2B program, suggested he lacks a firm grasp on the specifics of the policy, Chishti added.

“Just because he says something to the New York Post doesn’t make it a reality in the world of immigration,” Chishti said.

Immigration issues have led to a schism among Trump’s advisers, some of whom believe that supporting legal immigration is key to building support for a crackdown on illegal immigration, while a more fervently nationalist group that includes Bannon argues for making immigration of all kinds more difficult.

Earlier on Saturday, Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, slammed Musk’s defense of the program in a post on the social network Gettr, calling him a “toddler” in need of a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services. He was responding to an X post in which Musk used an expletive to insult H-1B opponents and threatened to “go to war on this issue.”

“The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention,” said Tom Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama. “Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this actually does happen.”

Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.