For Immigration Hawks Trump and Musk, H-1Bs Are an Exception

When Elon Musk nuked moderation measures on X, he likely didn’t expect to become the target himself of nativist attacks on foreign workers and the corporations that hire them.

To the extent he’s weighed in on immigration previously, it’s been to spread disinformation about migrant crimes and “open borders.” But in a social media fracas over H-1B visas around the holidays, Musk cast himself as a foil to fellow MAGA supporters of Donald Trump—and was later backed up by the incoming president.

If that came off as a surprise, it shouldn’t have.

For Musk, defending the H-1B program is a matter of self interest. Tesla Inc. ranked 16th among companies with approved H-1B visa petitions in 2024, doubling its number of employees on the visas from the previous year, the National Foundation for American Policy found.

As Tesla’s corporate footprint grows, so does its demand for foreign-born engineers who, in Musk’s words, are filling a “dire shortage” in the US. Tesla and, much more significantly, Musk’s SpaceX fill significant roles as government contractors.

The federal government itself has used H-1B workers, provided through contractors, to fill information technology jobs. That held true during Trump’s first term, as Bloomberg Law reported in 2019, even as his administration issued a number of regulations seeking to restrict use of the visas as part of its “Buy American, Hire American” initiative.

After largely sitting out the influence game in the first Trump administration, Musk pumped hundreds of millions into efforts backing his election last year. He was rewarded with an appointment to co-lead an advisory commission that will produce plans to downsize the federal government. And Musk wielded his new clout late last year to derail a must-pass government spending bill; lawmakers eventually passed a slimmed down package.

Musk’s influence doesn’t mean you’ll see a more liberal approach to employment-based immigration from Team Trump. Changes to H-1B visa caps or country quotas for green cards—both set by statute—are off the table unless Congress manages to overhaul immigration law for the first time in decades.

But the sway of Musk and Silicon Valley leaders who backed Trump’s election lends a powerful counterweight to figures like Stephen Miller, who would use any tool available to curb hiring of foreign workers.

Miller, as a White House official in the previous Trump administration, orchestrated a regime of new hurdles for both unauthorized and legal immigration. Now as deputy chief of staff, he could face bigger pushback from business leaders within Trump’s orbit—at least when it comes to work-based visa programs.

Considering its small footprint, the H-1B program generates outsized attention in immigration debates. Just 85,000 new visas are issued each year for workers in specialty occupations, including 20,000 reserved for workers with advanced degrees. The government received almost that many new asylum cases in the first two months of fiscal 2025 alone.

Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., and other top users of the H-1B program say there simply aren’t enough US-born college grads with the skills they need. If there were, why would they pay thousands of dollars per worker in visa fees and attorney costs, on top of the prevailing wages they’re required to pay?

For the Indian workers who make up the majority of H-1B recipients, annual green-card quotas mean they’ll wait decades for permanent residency, providing fodder for opponents who label the program exploitative. It also leaves workers vulnerable to corporate downsizing that can affect their visa status, and to sudden shifts in immigration policy.

In Trump’s first term, that meant spiking a policy giving deference to prior approvals for visas up for renewal and an unsuccessful attempt to raise the minimum salary required to hire H-1B workers, which would limit eligibility for early career professionals. Overall, visa denials jumped under Trump.

After the election, immigration attorneys advised employers to prepare for more of the same. But when Trump backed Musk in the visa debate, calling H-1Bs “a great program,” many in the immigration bar took notice.

“He could have stayed out of it,” said immigration attorney Greg Siskind.