Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, vowed to go to war to defend the US visa program for foreign tech workers, called H-1B, late on Friday amid a dispute between longtime supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump. And his supporters. His latest backers are from the tech industry.
In a post on the social media platform
He added, “I will go to war over this issue, the likes of which you cannot understand.”
Musk, a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, received an H-1B visa, and his electric car company Tesla received 724 visas this year. H-1B visas are typically issued for three-year periods, although holders can extend them or apply for permanent residency.
Musk’s tweet was directed at Trump supporters and immigration hardliners, who have increasingly pushed for the elimination of the H-1B visa program amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought to the country on work visas.
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Trump has remained silent so far on this issue. Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets and the H-1B visa discussion.
In the past, Trump has expressed his willingness to offer more work visas to skilled workers. He also promised to deport all immigrants who are in the United States illegally, impose tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens, and severely restrict immigration.
The case highlights how technology leaders like Musk — who played an important role in the presidential transition, advising on key personnel and policy areas — are now under scrutiny from his base.
The U.S. technology industry relies on the government’s H-1B visa program to hire skilled foreign workers to help run its companies, a workforce that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.
US President-elect Donald Trump continues to rally his team with hard-line MAGA supporters, including Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman and outspoken critic of Justin Trudeau, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Former Trump rival Marco Rubio is expected to be named Secretary of State.
The melee was sparked earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American venture capitalist, to be an AI advisor, saying he would have an impact on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidant, criticized “Big Tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program and called immigration a threat to Western civilization.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires have drawn a line between what they view as legal and illegal immigration.
Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump be elected president in November. He has posted regularly this week about the shortage of homegrown talent to fill all the in-demand positions within US tech companies.
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