Summary
Senator Bernie Sanders criticized Elon Musk over his support for the H-1B visa program, calling it a tool for corporations to replace good-paying American jobs with lower-wage foreign labor.
Sanders cited data showing U.S. companies laid off 85,000 American workers between 2022 and 2023 while hiring 34,000 H-1B visa holders, arguing this undermines U.S. competitiveness.
Musk, who credits the visa program for his success, defended it, stating he’s ready to “go to war” over the issue.
The debate has divided MAGA conservatives, exposing rifts within Trump’s coalition.
You aren’t wrong on that part. That’s what the H1-B program is designed for. In practice, corporations have exploited the intent of it and instead used it to select very narrowly trained software developers, it workers, and technicians instead of Ph. ds, inventors of specific techniques, or experts with rare and niche technology.
Out of 30 or so I have worked with, I have only worked with one true expert. He was an optics dude who knew specific techniques for using TI DLP to create 3 dimensional images on a transparent plane (I think it was just acrylic). In what I could observe, it was not obvious that he was being exploited, and if I remember right, he was compensated to the limits of the visa, and only brought back on his terms.