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Musk and Ramaswamy Back Visas, Angering MAGA Supporters

Support for Foreign Workers Reignites Tensions Between Elite and Conservative Base in US

Mary Carter
3 min readDec 27, 2024
Illustration created by myself via AI

I’ve lived in the US long enough to witness the striking contrast unfolding before me. While Trump rallied with his “America First” message, the companies that keep America leading in technology critically depend on “imported” brains.

And it’s not for lack of trying to hire Americans — there simply aren’t enough engineers here to fuel the innovation machine.

The political storm that Musk and Ramaswamy unleashed by defending H-1B visas exposes a deep contradiction in the MAGA movement. The conflict is clear: they champion American technological supremacy while attacking the very system that sustains it.

Musk’s companies — Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) — are living examples of how global talent drives American innovation. The “job stealing” narrative crumbles when faced with reality: these companies create thousands of jobs for Americans.

Silicon Valley is a microcosm of global intellectual diversity’s power. In every office, lab, and startup, international talent collaborates to create technological futures.

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