Musk Vows to Defend H-1B Visa Program Amid Criticism

The H-1B visa program grants nonimmigrant worker status to up to 65,000 highly skilled individuals annually.

Elon Musk has pledged unwavering support for the H-1B visa program, vowing to go to “war” to defend it. He credited the program for bringing “critical” foreign-born, highly skilled workers to the United States—individuals who he said have played pivotal roles.

“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,” Musk said in a Dec. 27 post on social media platform X, in response to a comment suggesting that the H-1B program should be “optimized” out of existence.

“Take a big step back and [expletive],” Musk continued. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

The H-1B visa program grants nonimmigrant worker status to up to 65,000 highly skilled individuals annually, filling specialized roles in the U.S. workforce. Additionally, it provides 20,000 visas to foreign-born workers who have earned advanced degrees in the United States. Musk himself came to the United States as a foreign student and later secured work status through an H-1B visa.

Musk’s defense of the H-1B program comes as debates over immigration policy and workforce competitiveness intensify, with critics arguing the program undermines domestic job opportunities and proponents emphasizing its role in driving innovation and economic growth.

During his first term, President Donald Trump imposed restrictions on foreign worker visas and expressed criticism of the program. However, his 2024 campaign signaled a potential shift, indicating a willingness to grant H-1B visas, or even green cards, to foreign-born workers who graduate from U.S. universities.

In recent days, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are set to jointly lead Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have both ramped up their advocacy of American companies using H-1B visas to hire workers.

In a post on X on Dec. 25, Musk said that the United States needed to double its number of engineers, citing a shortage of “super talented” and “super motivated” individuals. Comparing the United States to a pro sports team, he argued for recruiting top global talent to maintain competitiveness. While he expressed preference for hiring Americans, Musk stressed the importance of legal immigration for attracting the top 0.1 percent of engineering talent.

Ramaswamy supported Musk’s stance, criticizing American culture for purportedly prioritizing mediocrity over excellence and defending companies that hire foreign talent to remain competitive.

“Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

While Musk and Ramaswamy argue that U.S. immigration policies should prioritize attracting and retaining the world’s top talent, critics contend that the program often displaces domestic workers and drives down wages.

Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s views have sparked resistance both from factions within Trump’s political base and from conservatives more broadly.

“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender—and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote in a Dec. 26 post on X. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”

Former U.N. ambassador and presidential candidate Nikki Haley weighed in, criticizing Ramaswamy’s comments and urging Trump to prioritize American workers over foreign-born talent.

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” Haley wrote in a post on Dec. 26. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested there is common ground between tech industry leaders and immigration restrictionists regarding the H-1B visa program.

In a recent op-ed, Kirkorian suggested reforming H-1B visas by prioritizing higher-salaried, highly skilled workers to attract top talent while limiting visa numbers and so reducing overall immigration, which he noted is a key demand of Trump voters.

“Increasing the share of new immigrants selected based on their skills—described as a ’merit-based’ system—has long been a goal of President Trump,” Kirkorian wrote, adding that an “obvious win-win” would be to eliminate the visa lottery and what he described as “chain-migration” categories and reallocate roughly half of those visas to skilled categories.

“This would result in both an increase in the number and share of new immigrants chosen for their skills and a reduction in the overall level of immigration,” he argued.

A bill co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in 2017 and endorsed by Trump, the RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act, sought to accomplish objectives roughly in line with Krikorian’s suggestions.

The bill, which did not receive a vote in the Senate, aimed to cut levels of legal immigration to the United States by 50 percent, eliminating the current demand-driven model with a merit-based points system that gives points for factors such as education level, existing job offer, or extraordinary achievement such as a Nobel Prize. Canada and Australia use similar merit-based systems.

Other legislative initiatives similar to RAISE have failed to advance.

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.