What the visa feud says about the coming Trump administration
CNNCNN — Donald Trump’s siding with Elon Musk over visas for high-tech workers is the most significant example yet of the president-elect favoring powerful elements in his new MAGA coalition over his base’s anti-immigrant DNA that he twice tapped in his rise to power. On the other side of the debate, Steve Bannon, who served in the first Trump administration, blasted H-1B visas on his “War Room” podcast as a “scam” by Silicon Valley oligarchs that are about “taking American jobs and bringing over what essentially become indentured servants at lower wages.” Why the H-1B visa issue has divided the MAGA movement H-1B visas allow the brightest foreign workers, many of them engineers and computer scientists, to live and work in the US. How immigration became a driving force for Trump’s rise H-1B nonimmigrant visas allow American firms to temporarily employ foreign workers with specialized knowledge and advanced academic qualifications to help them stay globally competitive. Trump has now made clear he agrees with Musk and said he’d sometimes used H-1B visas in his businesses, although he’s more frequently employed temporary part-time foreign workers on H-2B visas at his golf resorts and hotels.