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Trump’s Silicon Valley Advisor Pick Pits MAGA Loyalists Against Tech Bros Led By Musk, Ramaswamy
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Trump’s Silicon Valley Advisor Pick Pits MAGA Loyalists Against Tech Bros Led By Musk, Ramaswamy

By Jim Taft
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The GOP is tearing itself apart over a heated multi-day immigration debate, kicked off after President-elect Trump nominated Indian national Sriram Krishnan as a senior advisor on artificial intelligence.

Trump appointed Krishnan on Dec. 22. While the tech community lauded the pick, many MAGA loyalists criticized it harshly.

Chief among their complaints was Krishnan’s past advocacy to remove current country caps on skilled legal immigration.

“Anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration would be huge,” Krishnan tweeted in November.

Vocal Trump supporter Laura Loomer called the pick “disappointing,” and questioned to her 1.4 million X followers how his positions on immigration meshed with Trump’s America First agenda.

“How will we control immigration in our country and promote America First innovation when Trump appointed this guy who wants to REMOVE all restrictions on green card caps in the United States so that foreign students (which makes up 78% of the employees in Silicon Valley) can come to the US and take jobs that should be given to American STEM students,” Loomer wrote Monday evening.

Her criticism ignited a heated debate that has ceaselessly raged on X since she wrote it, even leaking onto the cable news circuit in the following days. (RELATED: PATEL: How To Fix Big Tech’s Favorite Broken Immigration Policy)

One notable Trump ally who supported Krishnan’s nomination was Elon Musk, who, after initially congratulating Krishnan on X, began tweeting his support for the H1B visa program.

Musk argued that there is a “permanent shortage” of engineering talent in Silicon Valley and that the country needs double the current number of engineers.

However, others have argued that there is no shortage of American engineers and that the H1B program is nothing more than a cynical way for Silicon Valley and other corporations to exploit foreign workers for cheaper employees.

“250,000 engineering graduates in the US every year from the best schools in the world. But this is about cost of tech labor and the ability to NOT higher American Engineers,” author Jarl Jensen wrote in a Thursday post on X.

The H1B visa, the largest visa category in the U.S., allows employers to hire skilled foreign workers and “authorizes the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the U.S.,” according to the Department of Labor.

In 2021, Facebook agreed to separate settlements with the U.S. Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Labor (DOL) totaling nearly $15 million after the government accused them of discriminating against American workers in favor of cheaper foreign employees.

“Facebook routinely reserved jobs for temporary visa holders through the PERM process. Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that, in contrast to its standard recruitment practices, Facebook used recruiting methods designed to deter U.S. workers from applying to certain positions, such as requiring applications to be submitted by mail only; refused to consider U.S. workers who applied to the positions; and hired only temporary visa holders,” the DOJ announced in 2021.

Facebook is not alone in manipulating the program for profit. An Economic Policy Institute report found that Google, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm and others hired 2,735 new H1B workers in 2022 while laying off close to 15,000 employees — “nearly five and a half times the number of H-1B workers they hired.”

Silicon Valley is the dominant player in the H1B game, but the EPI found that Goldman Sachs and consultancy firm McKinsey & Company also collectively fired 5,000 employees while importing 1,000 H1B workers in 2022.

The report argued that H1B workers face significantly worse work conditions and lower pay, in part because their immigration status being tied to their job affords them less power to negotiate salaries.

Musk’s Tesla ranked 27th in total approved H1B visas for 2022 with 337.

The conversation reached a boiling point Thursday, when Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-head Vivek Ramaswamy weighed in with a lengthy screed, which some interpreted as an insult to American culture and work ethic.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture,” Ramaswamy wrote in an X post.

He argued that American culture “venerated mediocrity” and argued for a greater influence of the immigrant culture that emphasizes hard work over leisure.

“More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’ More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall,’” he wrote.

While much of the tech community sided with Ramaswamy, many people in Trump’s base viewed the post as an attack on American culture. Ramaswamy’s note invited a swell of humorous memes about his references to popular TV shows of the 1990s like “Boy Meets World” and “Saved by the Bell,” however they also prompted fierce backlash and an organic movement of Americans standing up for their culture.

“American jock + bro culture, which values the high school quarterback over the Math Olympiad contestant,” pollster Patrick Ruffini tweeted alongside a picture of D-Day.

Both Elon and Vivek appeared to temper their responses to some degree as the debate heated up. (RELATED: Democrats, Media Have New Strategy To Break Up Trump-Musk Honeymoon)

“I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote Thursday.

Some, however, pointed out that America already has a separate visa program for geniuses who would be considered in the top 0.1%, the O1 visa.

Ramaswamy, too, admitted he has previously criticized the “badly broken” H1B program, calling for it to be “gutted” after an eagle-eyed X user pointed out his past remarks to him.

Trump appeared to come out in favor of the H1B program in comments he made to The New York Post Saturday. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” he said.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he added.

Trump has criticized the H1B program in the past, even admitting he exploited the program himself.

“I know the H1B very well,” he said in a 2016 CNN GOP presidential debate in Miami. “It’s something that I frankly use and shouldn’t be allowed to use. We shouldn’t have it. It’s very, very bad for workers. And second of all, it’s very important to say, well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do. When it’s sitting there waiting for you, but it’s very bad. It’s very bad for business and it’s bad for our workers and unfair for our workers.”



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