Tesla replaced laid off US workers with foreign workers using H-1B visas that Musk want to increase

[JHB]

31. It's a labor issue (not that the MAGAts would frame it that way)

There are more stances on this issue than just MAGA bigots vs techbro H1b cheerleaders. Yes, we want a visa program for highly skilled individuals, but tech companies have been abusing the H1b program for decades, and thanks to money and lobbying to both parties, it's never been fixed.

Tech companies will make a fig leaf job listing for domestic engineers, usually with a provision that no applicant can meet and thus provides an excuse to deny any applicant, such as "must have 10 years experience" in a technology that didn't exist ten years ago. They can then tell the government "well, we couldn't fill the position domestically" and go for a visa hire.

A lot of those jobs aren't things that require such super-special knowledge that domestic engineers can't do it, but visa hires are cheaper and are more easily controlled thanks to the terms of the visa and their contracts.

Also, to the extent that domestic engineers don't know certain technologies, a good portion of that is because visa abuse has warped the job market to the extent that domestic engineers don't bother learning those technologies because it will be time, money, and effort wasted: no matter what they do, those jobs will go to visa hires, so they don't specialize in those things, artificially creating a knowledge gap for domestic engineers.

It wasn't watching Saved By The Bell that created the gap (as Vivek Ramaswami claimed a few days ago), it was the hiring practices of Elon and Vivek and many others.

It's a very legit stance to be in favor of the H1b program but want abuse of it substantially cleaned up and effective enforcement of its rules.