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WASHINGTON — As the debate about skilled foreign worker visas roils the Republican Party, Elon Musk said Sunday that the country’s H-1B program is “broken” and “needs major reform.”
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and head of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, had previously defended H-1B visas for bringing “critical people” to his companies. But on Sunday, he wrote on X that the program is “easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H-1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically.”
During his first term, Trump worked to change the H-1B visa program so the most skilled and best paid workers received them. It is unclear if — or how — he would change the system after he is inaugurated Jan. 20.
While many of Trump’s supporters, including Republican congressional leaders, have taken issue with tech companies hiring foreign workers instead of American citizens and have called for H-1B visas to be eliminated, others say they are a critical engine for U.S. economic growth.
Trump campaigned on a hardline position toward immigrants who enter the country illegally. Many of his supporters now expect him to make good on his America First agenda of prioritizing policies that favor U.S. citizens.
Over the weekend, in an interview with the New York Post, Trump, who once called H-1B visas “very bad” for American workers, seemed to change his position, saying, “I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.”
He told the Post he has “many H-1B visas on my properties” and called it “a great program.”
