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President Donald Trump drew criticism from those within his “Make America Great Again” base after he reinvigorated debate on one of his party’s most controversial issues: H-1B visas.
The visas allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for up to six years.
The issue resurfaced after Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview that aired Tuesday that bringing foreign workers to the U.S. on H-1B visas is important to “bring in talent” to the U.S. While Ingraham argued that the U.S. has talent at home, Trump said that wasn’t the case.
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“No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You don’t have, you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn!” Trump said. “You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say I’m gonna put you into a factory where we’re gonna make missiles.”
Trump also defended past remarks endorsing allowing up to 600,000 Chinese students to come to the U.S. to Ingraham, claiming that they must study in the U.S. so U.S. colleges don’t “go out of business.”
While proponents of the program argue that the program is key to U.S. competitiveness, critics argue that the visa holders are taking away jobs from Americans.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., promptly spoke out against the statements, claiming that she is “America First and America Only.”
“I believe in the American people. I am one of you.I believe you are good, talented, creative, intelligent, hardworking, and want to achieve. I am solidly against you being replaced by foreign labor, like with H1Bs,” Greene said. “I am solidly against allowing foreign students into our colleges and universities, like 600,000 Chinese students, just to financially prop them up. If they fail, they fail. The system in place isn’t helping our young people anyway.”
Other Republicans weighed in and said the policy could play out poorly for the GOP in the 2026 midterms.
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“This is insane—we’re going to lose the mid-terms so badly,” Anthony Sabatini, a Republican county commissioner in Florida, said in a Tuesday post on X. “We’ve never seen an administration crash & burn in its first year so badly—for no reason other than to appease donors and special interests.”
Meanwhile, the White House pointed to the Trump administration’s announcement in September that would require a $100,000 annual fee for companies seeking to obtain an H-1B visa. Likewise, the White House said that the Department of Labor launched Project Firewall in September in an attempt to ensure employers don’t abuse the H-1B visa process.
“The Trump administration is protecting American workers by restoring accountability in the H1-B process, ensuring that it is used to bring in only the highest-skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations and not low wage workers that will displace Americans,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a Wednesday statement to Fox News Digital.
The issue historically has been controversial within Trump’s base, particularly after Trump himself came out and backed H-1B visas, saying it was a “great program” and that he’s a “believer in H-1B” in an interview with the New York Post in December 2024.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who originally is from South Africa and used an H-1B visa to remain in the U.S., also said in December he would “go to war” on the issue.
“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,” Musk said in a December 2024 post on X.
The comments and Trump’s support ignited backlash within the president’s own party. Original MAGA supporters like Steve Bannon, who previously served as Trump’s White House chief strategist, blasted the program in response and labeled it a “scam” in his podcast in December 2024.
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He also promised to undermine Musk’s influence at the White House as Musk geared up to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a separate interview.
“This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious,” Bannon told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in January.
In the same interview, Bannon vowed to “run out” Musk from the White House and would make “it my personal thing to take this guy down.”
Members of the left also remain critical of the H-1B program. For example, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said that the program is used to replace U.S. workers and pay foreigners for less.
“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,” Sanders said in a post on X in January. “The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”
Fox News’ Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.
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