Photo: Stone RF
Last week saw a massive debate spring up on Elon Musk's X about the importance of the H1B Visa program, which lets citizens of other countries come and work here in the United States. Tech companies say those visas are necessary, while others argue they hurt American workers.
Elon Musk, as well as other Trump allies like Vivek Ramaswamy and even Trump himself, came out in support of the program, while some members of the MAGA base argue that we should prioritize helping natural-born Americans get jobs that often go to H1B workers.
Mark Krikorian with the Center for Immigration Studies says that while not everyone in the new Republican coalition agrees on this issue, it doesn't need to split the base. He said, "Legal immigration is an area where there is disagreement. There are indeed ways of satisfying both sides of this concern."
Krikorian suggests that we can start by reforming the H1B Visa program, in order to crack down on companies that abuse it to mass-import low-skill and low-wage workers. He said, "You would do that by giving the visas out based on who is offered the highest salary, rather than by lottery, which is the way you do it now."
This would allow tech companies to bring in the high-skilled foreign labor that they say they need to keep their companies, and by extension, American industries and the economy, ahead of the competition, while also preventing them from using the H1B program to import cheap labor and put Americans out of work.
To that end, Krikorian also suggested the implementation of a salary floor, which would mandate a minimum salary for eligibility for an H1B visa.
Krikorian also said that despite left-wing attempts to spin this debate as a breakdown of Trump's coalition, it's actually good that debates about this issue are happening out in the open. He says that will make it easier for an acceptable policy to be agreed upon before the next election cycle.
You can read more from Krikorian on this topic here.