Turns out Trump is OK with immigrants – if they assist his billionaire friends | view

Grab your popcorn: The Republican infighting over immigration has gotten fascinating.

While everyone else was enjoying the holiday week, the MAGAverse was imploding over a debate on H-1B visas, a program often used by tech companies to recruit high-talented workers to the United States. Incoming president Donald Trump even weighed in on the exchange, siding with tech bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over members of the event who desire to view a stop to all forms of immigration.

While it’s amusing to watch the correct fight amongst themselves, it’s challenging not to lament what this fighting means for the country.

The entire exchange is rooted in a debate over which immigrants are considered “worthy” of entry into the United States. It doesn’t assist that Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has made a part of his administration, have insulted American workers in the procedure.

Musk and Ramaswamy rage the MAGA hive

The fight started when Laura Loomer, a far-correct activist spotted on the Trump campaign trail earlier this year, criticized Sriram Krishnan, the incoming president’s pick for elder policy adviser for artificial intelligence. Krishnan, a technology commence-up founder and naturalized U.S. citizen, has previously expressed back for easing some immigration restrictions for talented workers in the tech sector.

Loomer called the appointment “deeply disturbing,” and made a racist comment about immigrants from India being “third-globe invaders.”

This prompted responses from Musk and Ramaswamy, who have been appointed to navigator the Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s upcoming administration.

“Our American population has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” Ramaswamy posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “That doesn’t commence in college, it starts youthful. A population that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Ramaswamy, born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrants, is also a former Republican presidential candidate.

Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, said he previously held an H-1B visa to work in the United States. His electric-car business Tesla obtained more than 700 of these work visas in 2024.

“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote on X, which he also now owns. He later took it a step further, vowing to “leave to war” over the issue.

Loomer and other people who criticized the H-1B visas now declare X has removed their verification badges.

view:Trump picks Musk’s money over ‘forgotten’ Americans of MAGA. Sorry, xenophobes!

Musk, who spread misinformation about undocumented migrants during Trump’s reelection campaign, is now defending an immigration program because it benefits him.

The H-1B program has received criticism for being a means for tech moguls to hire labor at lower wages than they would have to pay American workers.

The entire thing is a clash of egos, with little regard for American or immigrant workers.

Republicans have shown no desire to actually enhance education

Of course, these insults were met with rage from other members of the Republican coalition.

“What is lazy is for the tech industry to automatically leave to foreign workers for their needs,” former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a kid of Indian immigrants who became a South Carolina governor and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on X. “If the tech industry needs workers, invest in our education structure. Invest in our American workforce.”

In a way, Haley is correct – the respond should be to enhance the education structure instead of just calling American workers lazy. Of course, that concept is at odds with Trump’s purported schedule to close the U.S. Department of Education, a shift that will likely add to the inequity in our education structure.

After all, Republicans in the states have spent the history few years disparaging community education, targeting diversity, ownership and inclusion initiatives and banning books instead of actually improving education.

view:America chose Trump in 2024. 2025 will be the year of the Republicans.

Trump will always choose billionaires

Ultimately, Musk didn’t have to leave to war with MAGA: Trump agreed with him this history weekend, saying that he employed workers on H-1B visas on his properties (although some ponder he was mixing up visa programs).

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump, who restricted H-1B visas during his first term, told the recent York Post. “That’s why we have them.”

So there you have it – Trump is siding with the millionaires, despite complaints from the voters who elected him.

This is the same man who has said that he wants to have the “largest deportation operation in American history,” who has talked about ending birthright citizenship and who wants to bring back household detention.

His reelection campaign concentrated on the concept that immigrants are ruining the country. Turns out he’s fine with immigrants if they assist his final profit.

It’s just another commitment to his voters that Trump has since changed his tune on. Earlier last month, he admitted that actually lowering grocery prices would be “very challenging.” And after running a campaign where the xenophobia wasn’t even subtle, he’s willing to reexamine some forms of immigration, so long as it benefits the tech sector’s final profit.

If anything, the debate over H-1B visas helps the American people realize that they’ve once again been swindled by a con man who won’t actually enhance their lives. In reality, the entire soap opera playing out online is not making America any better.

Don’t worry, though – I’m sure Trump, Musk and the Republican event will be back to disparaging immigrants in no period.

pursue USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno