US President-elect Donald Trump seemed to back a visa program for highly skilled tech workers that Elon Musk heavily supports, even though he moved to limit access to it in his first term.
Elon Musk vowed to go to "war" to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers late on Friday amid a dispute between President-elect Donald Trump's longtime supporters and his most recently acquired backers from the tech industry.
In a post on social media platform X/Twitter, Musk said, "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 H1B."
"I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend," he added.
On Saturday, President-elect Trump told the New York Post that he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Musk on the issue.
Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2024
Despite Trump's support, Musk began to backtrack
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said.
“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,” added Trump.
The BBC reported that both Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have been critical of the visa program in the past. Trump initially restricted access to foreign worker visas in his first administration.
The initial issue arose after Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump's pick to co-head the Department of Government Efficiany with Musk, heavily critiqued US firms in a post on X/Twitter, according to the BBC.
"Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence," Ramaswamy wrote, as reported by the BBC. "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."
Ramaswamy later clarified that he thought the H-1B system needed to be replaced after backlash from Trump supporters, signalling a rift between Trump's longtime "America first" supporters and his new tech sector backers.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued "big tech oligarchs" for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Musk, a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric car company, Tesla, obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for green cards.
The US tech industry relies on the government's H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labor force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.
However, despite Musk's strong initial stance, after facing backlash from his following, on Sunday, he posted on X, "I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform," adding, "I’m confident that the changes made in the @realDonaldTrump administration will make America much stronger.”