Musk promised to “go to war” for H-1BS. Now he’s silent on Trump’s $ 100,000 fees

War at Christmas

The head of Tesla and SpaceX has long been one of the most important defenders of the H-1B program of Silicon Valley, which allows American companies to bring in qualified workers when no domestic candidate can be found.

The program became a flash point after Trump supporters raged against the appointment of Sriram Krishnan, the new political director of AI, the new director of the White House, quickly turning into a fierce debate on H-1B visa and qualified immigration.

Krishnan, an Indian-American entrepreneur, publicly pleaded for an expansion of the program by removing the country ceilings, which was seen in opposition to the “America First” base of Trump who worries about immigrants taking jobs that Americans could otherwise do.

Far -right activist Laura Loomer led the accusation, denouncing Krishnan as a threat to Trump’s “America First” agenda, while allies like Matt Gaetz ridiculed “Tech Bros” to shape immigration policy. This led Musk, who said he entered the United States himself on an H-1B visa as an entrepreneur of South African origin, to conclude the debate.

“There is a disastrous shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America,” Musk published the day before Christmas. “If you force the best talents in the world to play for the other side, America will lose.”

When the hard-liners of the Maga movement attacked the program as a non-American, Musk shouted in profane terms: “Make a big step back … I go to war against this question as you cannot understand.”

His posts have triggered a béère Maga quarrel, releasing vitrioral and often racist attacks against H -1B immigrants – in particular Indians, who represent 71% of visas holders.

The VIVEK RAMASWAMY pharmaceutical billionaire was expected from his job in co-head DOGE after a post defended the H1-B visas upset Trump.

A few days before the new year, Musk had publicly softened, conceding that the system was “broken” and suggesting fixes such as higher salary thresholds and annual costs to guarantee that companies do not exploit cheap labor.

Trump’s $ 100,000 shock

Quick advance of nine months, and Trump is now taking this logic to the extreme.

On Friday, the president published a proclamation requiring a payment of $ 100,000 with each new H -1B petition – a secretary to the Howard Lutnick trade moved for the first time. The White House said that the costs are unique, applied to new requests, not to renewals. However, the shock was immediate.

The venture capital of Bay Area Deedy Das warned that the policy would prohibit the financial track of startups and stifle the ability of America to attract global talents.

“If you even suffocate this, it makes it even more difficult to compete worldwide,” he told CBS. The small founders called it a disaster.

The Co-founder of Netflix and the Democratic Mega-Donator Reed Hastings broke the ranks, welcoming the costs as a “large solution” which would eliminate the lottery and reserve visas for “very high value jobs”. But taking Hastings seems to put it in a minority. Most of the industry seem to consider the measure as a bodily blow that will affect the ability of technological companies to hire the best talents.

The silence of the musk on the question

In this context, Musk’s silence is striking. His relationship with Trump has been on roller coaster from the H-1B Christmas debacle. Once Trump’s “first boyfriend” at the White House and the largest republican donor in 2024, Musk broke publicly with the president in June on the Trump tax and expenditure plan, exploding his impact on American debt and clean energy incentives.

The quarrel intensified quickly: Musk called for Trump’s dismissal, warned that his prices would arouse a recession and even stated that Trump’s name belonged in Jeffrey Epstein’s files. Trump retaliated by threatening the Department of Effectiveness of the Government of Sic Musk on his businesses and told NBC that their relationship was “finished”. Since then, Musk has been silent on Trump.

However, on Sunday, the two appeared together for the first time since this bitter, smiling and shaking hands with the Charlie Kirk memorial.

Whether Musk retires to protect his fragile truce with Trump or to calmly approve the logic of higher costs, the silence is striking – a big cry of his Christmas wish to “go to war” for immigrant engineers like him.

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