Mr. Trump’s team internally debated immigration policy

A fierce internal controversy broke out between technology billionaire Elon Musk and the group supporting President-elect Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) policy after he chose the Indian-origin businessman. Sriram Krishnan, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, serves as an artificial intelligence (AI) policy advisor to the new administration.

The disagreement has put Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who was appointed co-head of the Government Performance Committee, into a confrontation with loyal supporters of the President-elect, including the radical activist right-wing Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, a former congressman who was a candidate for attorney general in the Trump administration.

This risks opening a gulf between Mr. Trump’s supporters on immigration, an issue that played an important role in the Republican candidate’s victory in the election.

Loomer, a prominent anti-immigrant activist, commented on social media that the President-elect’s choice of Krishnan as an AI advisor was “extremely disturbing.”

She criticized Krishnan for supporting visa and green card extensions for high-skilled immigrant workers. According to Loomer, this is “completely contrary” to the President-elect’s agenda.

Loomer is said to have persuaded Mr. Trump to spread false information about immigrants from Haiti “eating dogs and cats” during a debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in September.

Loomer’s comments sparked a backlash from Musk, the billionaire who runs Space X and Tesla, is President-elect Trump’s most influential ally, and is himself an immigrant from South Africa.

“America has always had a shortage of excellent technical talent. This is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Christmas Day.

In a later post, he wrote: “Which brings us to the question: Do you want America to win or do you want America to lose? If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will lose. It’s over.”

Musk’s point of view is supported by Ramaswamy. In a lengthy social media post, Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants from India, argued that America will decline if it fails to attract skilled immigrant workers.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born engineers and first-generation engineers from an immigrant family instead of ‘native’ Americans is not because Americans have a natural IQ. low birth rate. An important part of this problem is the cultural factor,” he wrote. “Our American culture has revered mediocrity over excellence for too long.”

“A culture that honors prom queens over math Olympiad champions, or athletes over valedictorians, will not produce the best engineers. ‘Mediocrity’ is irrelevant in a global marketplace.” fierce competition for technical talent,” Ramaswamy emphasized, adding that if this situation continues, the US will be defeated by competitors like China.

These comments continued to be met with strong reactions from MAGA supporters, led by Loomer, who delved into racist arguments.

“Vivek Ramaswamy knows that the Great Replacement theory is real,” she wrote, referring to the conspiracy theory spread by far-right groups claiming that indigenous ethnic or cultural groups, especially white people in the West, are being replaced by immigrant ethnic groups of color.

“I voted for H1B visa cuts, not extensions,” she said.

H1B is a non-immigrant visa issued by the US government, allowing companies to recruit highly qualified foreign workers to work in the US for a certain period of time.

“Tech billionaires can’t just walk into Mar-a-Lago, write huge checks and rewrite our immigration policy so they can hire an unlimited slave labor force from India.” India and China, who can never integrate,” Loomer wrote. “You don’t even know what MAGA immigration policy is.”

Ramaswamy’s arguments were also criticized by pro-Trump podcast host Brenden Dilley.

“I’m always excited to hear these tech guys bluntly tell you that they don’t understand anything about American culture and then have the audacity to tell you that you are America’s problem,” Dilley quipped. tomorrow.

Even Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential candidate whose parents were immigrants from India, wrote that “there is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you What we have to do is look at the border and see how many people want what we have. We should invest and prioritize Americans, not foreign workers.”

These controversies are a sign of a battle among the President-elect’s own supporters to win his trust. Trump has anti-immigration views and during his first term he restricted access to H1B visas on the grounds that they were vulnerable to abuse.

But during this year’s race for the White House, Trump declared that he was open to legal immigration for highly skilled workers, and said he wanted to grant permanent residency to those workers. Foreigners graduated from university in the US.

“If you graduate or get a doctorate from an American university, you will be able to stay in this country,” he shared last June.

Samuel Hammond, senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, said the recent controversy showed the possibility of internal conflicts under the Trump administration, among his most ardent supporters.

“This was like a warm-up for controversy and disagreements over the next four years,” Hammond wrote.