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President-elect Donald Trump<\/strong> enthusiastically supported the highly coveted H-1B<\/a> visa program on Saturday, which allows foreign workers in \u201cspecialty occupations\u201d into the United States. Whether or not these visas should be sustained and increased has caused MAGA infighting as billionaire Elon Musk<\/strong> backs the program to the dismay of hardline anti-immigration Trump supporters.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That\u2019s why we have them,\u201d Trump told the New York Post<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Jon Levine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire foreign workers \u201cin specialty occupations or as fashion models.\u201d Specialty occupations require the visa applicant to have at least a bachelor\u2019s degree or its equivalent, per the Department of Labor<\/a>. This type of visa is often used for workers in fields such as math, engineering, and technology\u2014areas uniquely beneficial to CEOs like Musk, who came to the US as an international student and says<\/a> he worked<\/a> using an H-1B visa.<\/p>\n According to reporting<\/a> from Forbes based on H-1B data, Tesla, which Musk runs, \u201cwas among the leading employers of new foreign-born scientists and engineers in [fiscal year] 2024.\u201d In FY 2024, Tesla had 742 H-1B petitions approved for initial employment, more than double their 2023 number: 328.<\/p>\n Back when he was running for president for the first time, in 2016, Trump took a different stance on the H-1B program, calling it \u201cvery bad for workers\u201d and saying that \u201cwe should end it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t have it. Very very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it\u2019s very important to say\u2014well, I\u2019m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do, and it\u2019s sitting there waiting for you\u2014but it\u2019s very bad,\u201d Trump said<\/a> at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s very bad for business, in terms of, it\u2019s very bad for our workers. It\u2019s unfair for our workers. And we should end it.\u201d<\/p>\n In this speech and elsewhere, including in his recent interview with the Post<\/em>, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he often uses H-1B visas at his properties. Yet, according to reporting<\/a> from the New York Times<\/em>\u2019s Ken Bensinger<\/strong>, \u201cTrump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program,\u201d and, instead, \u201che has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program,\u201d which is for workers like gardeners and housekeepers, \u201cas well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers.\u201d Over the past 20 years, according to federal data, Trump\u2019s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through these two H-2 programs.<\/p>\n And, a CNN review<\/a> of government labor data found that Trump\u2019s businesses sought to hire more foreign guest workers this year than any other year on record and gained approval to employ 209 \u2014including cooks, housekeepers, servers, and desk clerks.<\/p>\n Musk, the richest person<\/a> in the world, spent<\/a> over a quarter of a billion dollars on pro-Trump political action committees during the final months of the 2024 presidential election. This week, he\u2019s been feuding with other high-profile MAGA defends about the visa program\u2014spewing insults to naysayers on his social media site X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n