Trouble in Trumpworld over H-1B visas makes for strange bedfellows

Steve Bannon, one of the architects of Trumpism, is one the most influential voices on the right. Bernie Sanders, the veteran US senator from Vermont, is among the leading figures on the progressive left. In these divided times, they have found common ground.

As Donald Trump returns to the White House, a bitter row over H-1B visas – designed to bring skilled foreign workers to the US – has exposed the delicate threads that tie together his broad coalition – and that of the Democrats.

Trump’s appointment of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, as an adviser on artificial intelligence sparked a backlash from within his base – fueled in part by anti-Indian racism and criticism of Krishnan’s views on immigration. This was the stage for an acrimonious spat over the merits and pitfalls of the H-1B scheme.

While Elon Musk, a close ally of the president-elect, has argued the visas are essential for hundreds of companies at the heart of American industry, Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has branded the H-1B program a “total and complete scam” that deprives American workers.

Trump backed Musk over Bannon, declaring himself to be a “believer” in H-1Bs after using them “many times” in his businesses. But this fight is not over: Bannon is demanding the “complete and total elimination” of the scheme, and Musk has declared he would “go to war” to defend it.

Steve Bannon. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

Bannon, who still holds significant sway over Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement, has received support – albeit indirectly – from Sanders, who issued a lengthy critique of the H-1B status quo last week.

“Elon Musk is wrong,” the senator wrote. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest’, but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”

About 85,000 H-1B visas are granted every year. More than half a million people are authorized to work in the US under H-1B visas. While these are temporary, and typically granted for three years, holders can try to extend them, or apply for green cards.

Tech giants are some of the biggest corporate beneficiaries, with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Alphabet, the owner of Google and YouTube, and Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among those with the most approved petitions last year, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Amazon alone had 3,871 petitions approved.

Elon Musk speaks with President-elect Donald Trump, who backed Musk over H-1B visas. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Reuters

Musk, the world’s richest person, and a naturalized US citizen, was born in South Africa. He has himself held an H-1B visa and stated that “so many critical people” in his industrial empire – which includes Tesla, the electric carmaker, and SpaceX, the rockets and satellites business – have used the scheme.

Leaders in Silicon Valley have long claimed the system is essential for their businesses and beneficial to the wider economy. In an essay for the Washington Post in 2013, Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg questioned why the US offered “so few H-1B visas” that demand greatly outstripped supply, claiming that “each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return”.

But critics say it disadvantages Americans because firms are able to recruit workers from overseas – and pay them less. In a 2020 report, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argued that the program enabled employers to undercut local wage levels.

Companies “have an incentive to use this program, because they can control the wages, and have a lot of control over the worker”, Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the EPI, told the Guardian. The labor standards around H-1B were too “lax”, he argued, and the broader rules “inadequate”.

Costa is in favor of reform, rather than scrapping the scheme altogether. “I agree there needs to be a way for them to hire skilled and talented people,” he said. “But that’s just not the way the program is being used right now.”

Bernie Sanders. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

So often in politics, the fault lines of debate are drawn by political allegiance. But this is immigration. And this is Trump’s America.

“His Maga base is against immigration, but they don’t define it further,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. So on a narrow, nuanced component of the issue – in this case, H-1B visas – the coalition is divided.

“They have different interests involved. Bannon [Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff], Stephen Miller and others just want undocumented immigrants out,” said Sabato. “But of course, others have financial interests involved: Elon Musk is representing a big group of tech leaders and others.

“It’s obvious that this will lead to a compromise. Trump cannot afford to alienate his base. He cannot afford to alienate the richest man on earth, and all of his allies.”

The dividing lines of this debate are blurred by volatile protagonists. A day after Musk threatened to “go to war” on issues like H-1B, for example, he made the case for raising the minimum salary requirements for workers granted such visas to make it “materially more expensive” for firms to recruit overseas workers. “I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform,” he wrote.

Some Democrats are already considering how they might exploit the president-elect’s struggle to unite, and universally satisfy, his base. “Let’s take back the immigration issue by making it an economic issue,” James Carville, the veteran strategist, wrote in the New York Times last week, “and force the GOP to deny bipartisan reform that expedites entry for high-performing talent and for those who will bring business into our nation.”

H-1B emerged as the first battle between the unusual consortium that pushed Trump back into power. It is unlikely to be the last.

Sabato pointed to a planned extension of Trump’s multitrillion-dollar package of tax cuts, which came into effect in 2018, and provided significant boosts to big business and wealthy Americans. “There’s going to be fights on this, that and the other,” he said.

Trump’s proposals “need to help the working class, who went with him”, added Sabato. “At the same time, he can’t alienate the rich people.”