Musk’s immigration fight with Trump allies engulfs social media

By Justin Sink

A heated online debate over immigration policy exposed a growing rift between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters – including billionaire adviser Elon Musk – and his ardently anti-immigration base, previewing the difficult and sometimes-contradictory demands the president-elect is facing over his signature policy issue.

Social media platforms – including Musk’s X – were ablaze over the holiday week as technology executives who had backed Trump’s campaign voiced their desire to increase the number of high-skilled visas available to foreign workers, only to draw conservative criticism.

The president-elect himself remained outside the fray, content to let his supporters trade barbs. But the dispute underscored a central tension between Trump’s populist base and his corporate backers that’s likely to surface throughout his second term, beyond immigration to fights over taxes, trade, and government spending.

The immigration controversy originated after Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with longstanding ties to the president-elect, criticized his decision to name India-born investor Sriram Krishnan as a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Loomer assailed previous comments by Krishnan advocating for increased access to green cards and skilled worker visas, calling the effort antithetical to Trump’s “America First” effort.

That prompted pushback from Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been tapped by Trump to run a government efficiency panel. The two argued that US companies needed to recruit top talent from across the world to remain competitive.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk, who himself utilized an H-1B high-skilled visa to work in the US, wrote on X. He went on to compare engineers to foreign NBA stars like France’s Victor Wembanyama and Serbia’s Nikola Jokić.

‘More books, less TV’

Ramaswamy drew particular attention for a post arguing that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence” and that a country that “celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

The post, which also disparaged the glorification of slacker characters in 1990s television sitcoms, went on to encourage: “More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV.”

The remarks drew disapproval from across the political spectrum, with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley posting that there was “nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.”

“We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers,” she continued.

Subsequently, some conservative activists – including Loomer, New York Young Republican Club President Gavin Wax and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer – claimed their verification badges on X had disappeared, suggesting Musk had punished them over the flap.

Musk did not comment directly on the allegation, but did post that the social media platform’s algorithm “is trying to maximize unregretted user-seconds” and that users’ reach “will decline significantly” if they were blocked or muted by “more credible, verified subscriber accounts.”

Kushner Plan

The controversy echoed many of the themes that derailed efforts to overhaul the immigration system during Trump’s first term in office and may ultimately frame how the incoming administration approaches the issue.

During Trump’s first term, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, drafted a plan that maintained green card levels but eliminated an existing lottery system and preferential treatment for immigrants with family already inside the US in favor of a points-based system that would prioritize high-skilled workers. But that effort failed to gain traction on Capitol Hill, in part because some immigration hawks wanted tougher requirements on businesses to verify the eligibility of their workers.

Earlier this year, Trump offered a decidedly more open approach to visas when prompted during a podcast interview with venture capitalists David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis and entrepreneur David Friedberg.

“You graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country and that includes junior colleges too,” Trump said.

Malleable Trump

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt issued a statement at the time saying the offer “would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”

A Trump transition spokesperson pointed to a post on X from Trump adviser Stephen Miller that highlighted past American cultural and technological achievements in response to a request for comment on the current controversy.

Still, the episode underscored Trump’s malleability on policy specifics, and the incentives for supporters to publicly lobby him on immigration policy.

On social media, allies like Sacks — whom Trump has tapped to be his AI and crypto czar — looked to head off the controversy and shield Krishnan.

“These attacks have become crude, and not in the holiday spirit,” Sacks wrote.