Two important allies of US President-elect Donald Trump are at loggerheads over the issue of immigration, and the conflict has begun to spill out for the world to see. The two parties of the Trump camp who are at each other's throats are staunch right-wing anti-immigrant campaigners and numerous mighty Silicon Valley capitalists like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—both Americans born to migrant parents.
The disagreements and X (formerly Twitter) warfare were triggered following the elation of Indian-origin Sriram Krishnan as Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence by Donald Trump. It was not appreciated by the likes of Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, who criticized Trump's selection. Sriram Krishnan favours the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the US.
Loomer declared the stance to be not an "America First" policy and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves.
Donald Trump's stand on immigration to US
To be clear, during his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are poisoning the blood of our country" and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from US colleges.
"I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country," he told the All-In" podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy had openly embraced the need for more highly skilled workers in their industry. "The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk said in a Christmas Day post on X. “If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be."
What did Vivek Ramaswamy say to kick up X war?
While Musk stopped at asserting it was pivotal to seek the best talent wherever it is, Vivek Ramaswamy went on to blame the 1990s-era sitcom depictions of “cool” and “nerdy” kids for what he considers the country’s engineering shortage. USA would have had more engineers if the country lauded the Screech character from “Saved by the Bell” rather than his pretty-boy prep and jock counterparts, Ramaswamy, who was born in Ohio to Indian immigrant parents, argued.
"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. I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates," he wrote.
Brenden Dilley, a pro-Trump podcaster, was among the people who didn't take the observations likely. "I always love when these tech bros flat out tell you that they have zero understanding of American culture and then have the gall to tell you that YOU are the problem with America," Dilley wrote on X. According to MSNBC, podcaster Steve Bannon declared H-1B visas a scam and told the likes of Ramaswamy that, "If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now."
H-1B visas and immigration
Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut US citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. People from India reportedly constitute about 75% of those who apply for H-1B visas, followed by China (12%)