BOSTON, Massachusetts — Fissures within United States President-elect Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) coalition have appeared sooner than expected. By the end of December, the tech-billionaire wing was in open warfare with MAGA's nativist wing over America's H-1B visa program, which enables US businesses to employ some 600,000 skilled foreigners annually on a temporary basis.
Speaking for the billionaires, Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla (a top H-1B employer), argues that "there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley." Likewise, Vivek Ramaswamy, another tech billionaire advising Trump, claims that US companies need H-1B workers because "our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 1990s and likely longer)." In response, MAGA activists like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon — but also democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders — countered that the program helps large US corporations at the expense of American workers.
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