Dec. 28 (UPI) — Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want President-elect Donald Trump to allow more qualified foreign tech workers to obtain visas to fill a void in the nation’s tech workforce.
The future directors of the Department of Government Efficiency say it’s past time for the U.S. officials to enable more highly skilled and specialized tech workers to obtain H-1B visas to fill specialty occupation vacancies.
They addressed the matter after conservative activist Laura Loomer said she and others who oppose H-1B visas have been censored on Musk-owned social media platform X. She said she lost access to premium features.
“This is an abuse of power and it’s time for @TeamTrump to call our and condemn [Musk’s] abuse of power and his targeted harassment and retaliation against Trump supporters to spoke out about H-1B visas,” Loomer said Saturday in a post on X.
“This is blatant censorship and retaliation” Loomer said. “And it’s unethical and wrong.”
Loomer recently criticized Trump’s appointment of Sriram Krishnan as his incoming administration’s senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Krishnan is an Indian-American tech entrepreneur.
Ramaswamy and Musk suggested Loomer and others who oppose H-1B visa applicants promote mediocrity that, ultimately, lends support to the nation’s global competitors.
“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” Ramaswamy said Thursday in a post on X. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers.”
He described the global market for technology experts as “hyper-competitive” and warned that China will dominate that market without enabling more talent to enter the United States via the H1-B visa.
“This can be our Sputnik moment,” Ramaswamy said. “We’ve awaken[ed] from slumber before, and we can do it again.”
He said it’s time for U.S. culture to prioritize “achievement over normalcy, excellence over mediocrity, nerdiness over conformity [and] hard work over laziness.”
The H1-B visas are for those “who wish to perform services in a specialty occupation, services of exceptional merit and ability relating to a Department of Defense cooperative research and development project, or services as a fashion model of distinguished merit or ability,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
USCIS issues up to 65,000 H-1B visas every year, which are good for up to three years before requiring renewal. Another 20,000 visas are awarded to foreign workers who earned master’s or doctoral degrees from U.S. colleges and universities.
The United States had about 700,000 foreign workers employed with H-1B visa in 2023, according to the American Immigration Council.
Musk initially entered the United States from South Africa on an H-1B visa and eventually founded Tesla Motors and SpaceX. His technology businesses routinely hire H-1B visa holders to fill high-tech positions.
On Friday Musk, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he would “go to war” to maintain access to H-1B visas, which has drawn scrutiny from Trump supporters who are focused on “America-first” policies.
He likened the United States to a pro sports team with a tradition of winning that wants to keep on winning.
“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 said in a post on X.
“This is like bringing in the [Nikola] Jokic’s or [Victor] Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team … win the NBA,” Musk said.