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Recent infighting over H-1B visas came up after Trump chose Indian-born Sriram Krishnan to be his adviser on AI.

While some see the controversy as a cynical attempt to divide the MAGA movement, the two primary points of view are simple: the populist, nationalist Bannon wing, which wants to cut H-1B visas and boost the domestic workforce, and the Big Tech, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy wing, which wants to maximize skilled immigration and H-1B visas in order to “win.”

More often than not, the incentive lies not in a worker’s exceptional talent but in his or her desperation.

In a recent bizarre post, Ramaswamy claimed Americans are raised by a pop culture without a good work ethic and thus deserve to be replaced by harder-working foreigners.

A ‘complete scam’

Krishnan seeks to remove national origin caps on green cards to make it easier for H-1B recipients from countries like India to become American residents and citizens. He has also repeatedly talked about and focused on how difficult and Byzantine the U.S. immigration system can be for legal immigrants.

Musk has promised to “go to war on this issue,” crediting the H-1B with his own immigration and American success story.

Bannon has said H-1Bs are a “complete scam” and promised that he and the base are going to “rip your face off” if Musk and his allies think they can get away with supporting immigrants taking American jobs.

The left has gloated over the conflict, with former CNN host Don Lemon calling Musk and Ramaswamy “dumb f***ing idiots” and laughing about tech bros who are seeing Trump’s base turn against them in the “MAGA civil war.” Claiming this is just a fight over “white jobs,” Lemon admitted, “I just f***ing love it.”

Trump’s temptation

Trump has been in favor of limiting or ending H-1Bs in the past, saying they are granted for the “explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.” However, Trump now says he agrees with Musk that H-1Bs are a valuable tool for increasing American economic greatness, claiming this has always been his view.

Trump’s 2024 victory was helped greatly by the money and influence of Big Tech backers like David Sacks, Musk, and the Winklevoss twins. But his base is still deep-red Americans who don’t want to hear about how foreigners getting jobs helps some abstract idea of America or striving foreigners who barely speak English landing cushy tech jobs in Austin or San Francisco.

It’s understandably ridiculous to hear that America is just about GDP numbers and not about the generations who have lived and died as patriotic Americans.

H-1B 101

A look at what H-1B visas are and how they work helps dispel the canard that America lacks a skilled, disciplined workforce.

Anyone holding a bachelor’s degree or above and who has “highly specialized knowledge” can apply for an H-1B. If granted, it gives them the right to work in the U.S. for three years and apply for an extension up to six years. Officially, the wage paid to H-1B workers has to be equal to what would be paid to an American worker.

H-1Bs have existed since 1990 and are especially popular for foreign students in the U.S. who want to get hired at an American company and eventually get citizenship. These visas are liberalized legislative descendants of the H-1 visa of 1952, which excluded most applicants from Asia.

H-1Bs have been widely used by Silicon Valley to recruit graduates from India, China, and elsewhere, ostensibly to address the lack of qualified native-born Americans. The government can issue 85,000 H-1Bs per fiscal year via a lottery system. Much rarer visas like the O-1 are not used nearly as often.

Indentured servants?

But how exactly do H-1B visas help companies?

More often than not, the incentive lies not in a worker’s exceptional talent but in his or her desperation. While an H-1B employee can theoretically change jobs, the process is quite difficult; the best chance of staying in America is keeping the current boss happy. At the very least, this makes for compliant workers; in some cases it essentially amounts to indentured servitude.

Instead of offering more and more foreign workers a path to citizenship, we should be helping the citizens we already have participate more fully in the American economy. The Trump administration must focus on preparing Americans to get and excel at the jobs of the future, rather than reinforcing the cheap labor pipeline.