Elon Musk sparks MAGA backlash after calling for more immigrant workers

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Elon Musk sparks MAGA backlash after calling for more immigrant workers

Elon Musk Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Billionaire Tesla and X owner 

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, President-elect 

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‘s chief financier, on Wednesday sparked MAGA backlash after defending visas for foreign tech workers.

South African-born Elon Musk was once an immigrant to the U.S.,

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to build a future here. He employs hundreds of foreign-born engineers at his Tesla and SpaceX companies and says they fill a shortage of American-born workers.

Musk called a shortage of “excellent engineering talent” a “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley” in a Wednesday

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 arguing that immigrant labor is an essential ingredient in American innovation and warning of a “dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”

“If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story,” Musk

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But his plea for more immigrant talent has triggered some of Trump’s right-wing supporters.

“There are over 330 million people in America. Surely, there must be enough among them to build your ultimate team?” an X user wrote in a

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“Why would you deny real Americans that opportunity by bringing foreigners here?”

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a close ally of Trump’s with a

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denied the suggestion that the U.S. needed skilled immigrant laborers.

“Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India,” Loomer

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“We didn’t create it so that it could be exploited by pro open border techies.”

Musk’s companies rely on immigration policies that vastly differ from those pushed by MAGA. Per a

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of Tesla filings, the automaker sponsored 742 workers for H1-B visas, a class of visa for specialized workers with a 2.5% rejection rate in 2024, down from Trump administration rates of 24% in 2018 and 21% in 2019.

Musk is among a small cohort of voices inside Trump’s inner circle combatting the MAGA nativist narrative. Sriram Krishnan, Trump’s incoming policy advisor on artificial intelligence, previously

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an end to caps on green cards.

Still, Musk’s rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers, and other immigrants has been particularly virulent,

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hundreds of millions of views on X.

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#Elon #Musk #sparks #MAGA #backlash #calling #immigrant #workers

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