Donald Trump has yet to move back into the White House and already fissures are opening in his coalition, amid squabbling between Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley “tech bros” and his hardcore Republican backers.At the heart of the internecine sniping is Trump’s central election issue – immigration – and the H-1B visas that allow companies to bring foreigners with specific qualifications to the US.The permits are widely used in Silicon Valley, and Musk – who himself came to the United States from South Africa on an H-1B – is a fervent advocate.The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticised Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence (AI), saying that he would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.On Friday, Steve Bannon, a long-time Trump confidante, critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B programme and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilisation.Musk, the world’s richest man who bankrolled Trump’s election campaign and has become a close adviser, posted on X on Thursday that welcoming elite engineering talent from abroad was “essential for America to keep winning”.Vivek Ramaswamy, appointed by Trump as Musk’s co-chair on a new advisory board on government efficiency, suggested that companies prefer foreign workers because they lack an “American culture”, which he said venerates mediocrity.“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he posted, warning that, without a change in attitude, “we’ll have our asses handed to us by China”.Musk has vowed to go to “war” to defend the H-1B visa programme.In a post on social media platform X, Musk said: “The reason I’m in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H1B.”“I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he added.Musk, a naturalised US citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year.H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for green cards.Scepticism over the benefits of immigration is a hallmark of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement and the billionaires’ remarks angered immigration hawks who accused them of ignoring US achievements in technological innovation.Incoming White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted a 2020 speech in which Trump marvelled at the American “culture” that had “harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the Internet”.The post appeared calculated to remind critics that Trump won November’s election on a platform of getting tough on immigration and boosting American manufacturing.However, it was Michael Faraday, an English scientist, who discovered that an electric current could be produced by passing a magnet through a copper wire and Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander, who first split the atom.And Alexander Graham Bell may have died a US citizen but he was a British subject in Canada when he invented the telephone.Trump voiced opposition to H-1B visas during his successful first run for the White House in 2016, calling them “unfair for our workers” while acknowledging that he used foreign labour in his own businesses.The Republican placed restrictions on the system when he took office, but the curbs were lifted by President Joe Biden.Trump is known for enjoying the gladiatorial spectacle when conflict breaks out in his inner circle.He has been conspicuously silent during the hostilities that Politico characterised as “Musk vs MAGA”.Many MAGA figures have been agitating for a complete closure of America’s borders while the problem of illegal entries is tackled, and hoping for a steer from Trump that would reassure them that he remains firm in his “America First” stance.It remains to be seen whether these cracks can be smoothed out or if they are a portent of further strife, but critics point to the chaos in Trump’s first term as a potential indicator.“Looking forward to the inevitable divorce between President Trump and Big Tech,” said far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a MAGA figure with so much influence that she had a seat on Trump’s plane during the campaign. “We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats.”She has subsequently complained of censorship after she was stripped of her paying subscribers on X, which is owned by Musk.“Full censorship of my account simply because I called out H1B visas,” she posted. “This is anti-American behaviour by tech oligarchs. What happened to free speech?” Page 9
