On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump signed a record number of executive orders, including some intending to revise Biden-era immigration policies. However, one program stayed the same: the H-1B visa, which allows companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers. This has sparked a debate between two of Trump’s allies, Elon Musk and Stephen Miller. Musk, who once had an H-1B visa himself, said the tech industry, including companies like Tesla, needs these workers. But Miller, along with MAGA figures Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, argued the program takes jobs from Americans and lowers wages.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman explains how this issue is causing a split within the MAGA movement between what he calls the “nationalist right-wing” and the “tech bro right-wing.”
The following is an excerpt in the above video:
On the one hand, you have the kind of Steve Bannons, Laura Loomers. These are folks who do not want more H-1B visas, something that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy do want. They are all about America First in a sort of cartoonified 1950s way that doesn’t acknowledge globalization, it doesn’t acknowledge technical realities, it doesn’t acknowledge a lot of things about today. And they are sort of more of the core of Trump’s 2016 into 2020 base.
On the other hand, you’ve got the tech-bro right. This is the Elon Musks, the Peter Theils, maybe like a Mark Zuckerberg, although Mark Zuckerberg supposedly is not right-wing socially, but he’s cozying up to Trump anyway, maybe for pragmatic reasons.
But I think you get it, the tech-bro right. The tech bro realizes, as Elon Musk does, as Peter Thiel does, as Vivek Ramaswamy does, that they want to be able to bring in folks from other countries with H-1B visas. Are they taking American jobs? In a sense, they are, although Elon and they have argued for a long time that to have the best talent in American companies and to have the companies that are in the U.S. grow as quickly as possible for the benefit of Americans, you do need to bring in smart people from other countries. These are diametrically opposed forces right now.