'America first means the American people first': Tech industry clashes with MAGA base on H-1B visa debate

In a seemingly site-wide dispute on X between tech and MAGA, tech billionaires realized suddenly that America first means Americans first, and that's the bottom line. Pundits and commentators who backed Trump during the election and look forward with hope to his coming presidency proclaimed unabashedly that American workers should be the first to claim their slice of opportunity before the nation's industries and companies open up to the rest of the world. This was not something that DOGE heads Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy understood straight off, and the two were aligned on their view that foreign workers—who they said essentially are better than American workers—are necessary to further tech innovations in the US.

Speaking to Steve Bannon on Friday, Jack Posobiec summed up the MAGA right position, saying "America first means the American people first. I want to be very clear about that, because it seems like some people still do not get this, even after all these years, America first means the American people first. We are not vaccine first. We are not tech company first. We are not military-industrial complex first. No, we are American people first. That is what the nationalist populist movement underpinning MAGA is all about." Trump was backed by tech industry moguls during the election, including Musk, Sacks, and others who see his administration as being more favorable to conditions of prosperity in their sector, in large part due to Trump's anti-woke message.

The whole thing was sparked by President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Indian-born US entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan, who was nominated to be a senior policy advisor for Artificial Intelligence, and would be working with Trump's selected AI czar, tech mogul David Sacks, who backed Krishnan among a wave of backlash. There was definitely some anti-Indian sentiment, but for the most part, the argument was about backing American citizens for work and university admittance over foreign competitors. Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk made their case for increasing work visas for professionals to staff the tech industry in the US, but the pushback from the MAGA world was fierce. Mike Cernovich, very vocal in the conversation, brought up the likelihood of visa fraud, saying "Visa fraud is rampant. Look at Canada. Fake degrees, fake work histories, there's no way to check, even if people wanted to, which they don't. Much harder for a native born to compete with resume fraud. This is one of many issues that Big Tech won't admit re: H-1B in the U.S."

In 2022, before taking office as a senator from Ohio, Vice President-elect JD Vance called for changes to the H-1B system due to fraud, saying "Generally speaking, a lot of the H-1B abuse we see is in the interests of the people hiring the [foreign visa] worker, who can undercut the wages of Americans, but is it in the interest of the 700 Ohioans who lost their jobs? Absolutely not." He went on to say that "This is one of these issues where you actually need public policy to solve this problem because they’re taking advantage of a visa system that’s meant to ensure that American companies have the workers that they need, it’s not meant to undercut the wages of American workers in this country. Unfortunately, that’s what the H-1B visa is just being used to do right now."

Elon Musk, an immigrant himself from South Africa, has created a great deal of innovation across his companies, from SpaceX to Neuralink to Starlink to Tesla to X, and he advocated for H-1B visas, which import skilled overseas workers. In response to a post from the UAE-based Mario Nawfal account about the "limitations" in Silicon Valley stemming from an "engineering talent shortage," which claimed that the US semiconductor industry is in need of 160,000 engineers, Musk said "No, we need more like double that number yesterday!"

"The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low," Musk said. "Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win." In response, many, many accounts replied that this engineering shortage should not preclude hiring Americans. Many accounts posted their own trials at having attempted to gain work in the field, after attaining advanced degrees to do just that, only to find that they could not get a foot in the door. Musk's Tesla hired 742 new foreign workers in fiscal year 2024, which puts it 16th in US companies that hire H-1B workers.

Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated to the US from India, blamed American culture, saying "Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from 'Boy Meets World,' or Zach & Slater over Screech in 'Saved by the Bell,' or 'Stefan' over Steve Urkel in 'Family Matters,' will not produce the best engineers." In other words, the "Idiocracy" argument (if you haven't seen that Mike Judge film you should probably check it out). Ramaswamy was saying that we just don't have the talent and that we don't have the talent because our values are flawed so we have to import talent with values that are better than Americans' values so they can do the American jobs Americans can't do. This was "galling" to many, as Batya Ungar-Sargon said.

"Don't mistake the H-1B visa discussion for a ragebait culture war distraction or trolling," she said. "It gets to the heart of Trump's mandate, which is to restore dignity to working-class Americans. He needs to sideline the people in his orbit actively undermining that goal by unapologetically advocating replacing American workers with foreign ones. Unabashedly calling American workers or their culture too lazy and stupid to excel should be grounds for dismissal. It's not just wrong; it's galling."

One account, which was later suspended, responded to Musk, saying "My son graduated with honors with electrical and computer engineering degrees in 2023. He can not get an interview, let alone a job. Any white male he knew in college can't get jobs either. Many are currently in data center jobs that don't require their education." 

This perspective was rejoined by countless others who said that they, or their relatives, were unable to find work in a sector that prioritized race-based hiring after the 2020 BLM George Floyd riots. Data backs them up, too. American companies outsourced tech jobs to other countries, making it harder for Americans to get jobs in that industry. Then, when Americans moved on to other career paths, the tech industry complains they need to bring in foreigners to do the jobs. This is a tech industry-created problem. 

"So basically the right split into two factions," said one account, "tech right and right right, and the tech right is like 'hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs,' and the right right was like 'no you need to hire americans,' and the tech right is like 'buy you guys are retarded,' and the right right is like 'well you don't train us,' and the tech right is like 'you can't outtrain being retarded,' and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don't like Indians." 

Musk said "That pretty much sums it up. This was eye-opening."

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene called on American workers to take it upon themselves to do better, saying "Too many of our young people, are killing their bodies and minds on alcohol and drugs, wasting years and money earning useless college degrees, chasing unrealistic dreams, spending all their time trying to be the next you tuber/content creator/social media influencer instead of pursuing a useful skill set/trade/education in order to become a part of our much needed American workforce. If you fall in this category, put down the selfie light, and go apply for a job and replace the H1-B visa holders and all the other skilled labor jobs that foreign workers are taking and American companies are desperately trying to hire."

Tucker Carlson criticized ride-share company Uber back when he was still on Fox for firing Americans then hiring masses of H-1B foreign workers. "There's bipartisan consensus in Washington," Carlson said, "that we desperately need smart people from overseas to do the jobs that Americans are too badly educated to do. No reason to fix our schools, or make sure higher education is serious and unfrivolous. We can just import people from countries that take education seriously. And that's what we do. That's why the UD government passes out foreign worker visas to companies to replace people like you with people who live 6,000 miles away." He went on to describe how US STEM majors are unable to find work in their fields. "The only people who actually benefit from these visa programs are the tech billionaires (they're getting rich no matter what) and the foreign nationals who want to live in San Francisco." It's the indebted college grads, Carlson said at the time, who are paying the real price. "This is happening on a grand scale and both parties are for it."

This assessment would indicate that a) the foreign workers were not more skilled than the Americans, evidenced by the fact that Americans were training them, and b) American workers were pushed out of jobs so that foreigners could take their place. 

Bill de Blasio, former New York mayor and perhaps the worst mayor of all time, said on CNN this week that while he agrees with increasing education standards in the US, that needs to be done in conjunction with boosting the tech sector with foreign labor. Others claim that there's a disconnect between the right saying college is pointless and claiming that we need better education to create more workers to fuel the tech industry. But these two things are not at odds. Many of our great innovators did not finish college. Apprenticeships are a thing and are useful to train workers to be exactly the workers you need. It may be hard for people who are not American to understand, but America first means Americans first. That's the deal and there's no way around that.

Shermichael Singleton discussed the matter with de Blasio, saying "Americans didn't vote for Vivek Ramawamy, they didn't vote for Elon Musk, they voted for Donald Trump, in part because of his tough stance on immigration illegally, but also because, I assume, they believe that the president-elect wouldn't increase the number of individuals coming into the country even legally that would could potentially negatively impact or disproportionately affect Americans as it pertains to certain types of jobs...

"We need to focus on domestic skill development," Singleton said. "I understand what Mayor, former Mayor de Blasio was saying, we got to bring people in, but the goal of getting to that point, maybe in the decade or so, I get that, but why not limit the cap where it's at and focus over the next decade of increasing skills within our own people? Most Americans don't want to see good-paying American jobs going to people from India or China." A fellow panelist jumped in to say that there's "no evidence" that H-1B workers take American jobs from Americans, but Singleton wasn't having it, saying that there are plenty of Americans who can fill these positions and the US doesn't need more foreign labor for high-skilled jobs.

In 2016, Trump said "The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will 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, no exceptions." 

The US government permits 85,000 H-1B workers to come work for American companies every year. However, that cap does not apply for those at universities or nonprofits associated with universities, such as research arms, government research bodies, etc. Lawyers are bracing for a change to the H-1B climate in Trump's second term. In 2024, there was a near 100% success rate for H-1B visa applications, during which 97% of visa applications were approved. This was the "second-highest approval rate in a decade," VOA News reported. During his first term, Trump issued a Buy American, Hire American executive order which resulted in a decline in approvals for H-1B visas. The H-1B visa program was initiated in 1990.