Trump supporters are furious over recent comments from the president suggesting immigrant workers are needed to fill certain high-skill roles that he believes many Americans wouldn’t be qualified for.
In an interview on Monday with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, President Trump said the U.S. economy has to “bring in talent” in some cases on the H-1B specialist visa program, which is popular in the tech world.
When Ingraham pressed Trump that there were “talented people” in America companies could hire, the president batted down her comments.
“No you don’t,” he said. “You don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory and we’re going to make missiles.’”
The remarks have enraged MAGA supporters online who saw the president’s stance as a betrayal of his “America First” agenda to prioritize U.S. workers.
“This is insane—we are going to lose the mid-terms so badly,” Anthony Sabatini, a vocal pro-Trump county commissioner in Florida with a large online following, wrote on Tuesday on X, where the president’s remarks quickly went viral.
“We’ve never seen an administration crash & burn in its first year so badly—for no reason other than to appease donors & special interests.”
“Trump broke everyone’s heart with this line about the American workforce and H-1B’s,” added right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich in an X post.
MAGA members of the general public also voiced their shock at Trump, who has built a political career on a hardline anti-immigration stance.
“Americans train their H1B replacements everyday,” wrote X user @FaithInElon. “The opposite can also happen. H1B can train their American replacement. Tell @realDonaldTrump America First means #AMERICANSFIRST.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Some in the president’s corner defended the need to seek international talent.
“You can be America First and also recognize there may be times that you can import talent from other countries that makes America stronger,” conservative commentator Scott Jennings said in a panel discussion on CNN on Tuesday night. “We’ve done that for decades.”
As The Independent has reported, Trump has changed his position on H-1B visas numerous times over the years, first vowing to end the program, then committing in 2024 to expand it, part of the Republican’s campaign to woo prominent tech figures to his coalition.
The program has long been politically divisive within and beyond the Republican party, with some seeing the H-1B system as a way to lure top talent to the U.S., while others see companies including major tech firms seeking a way to undercut U.S. labor with cheaper foreign hires who are stuck in a visa program where they have little leverage to negotiate better pay.
In office, Trump has sought to shift the program to more highly paid specialists, increase worksite compliance inspections, restrict contracting, and signed a proclamation initiating a bruising $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications.
These changes have prompted some companies such as Walmart to stop H-1B hiring altogether, while the Chamber of Commerce has sued to challenge the fee provision.
Wall Street firms, another key user of H-1B workers, have responded in part by hiring more aggressively inside of India, a country that typically supplies large numbers of H-1B workers to the U.S.
China, meanwhile, has launched an H-1B-style program to compete for talent that would normally be bound for American companies.
