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Elon Musk is facing backlash from the right after suggesting the U.S. needs more skilled foreign workers to address a shortage of top engineers. His comments, made amid mass tech layoffs and ongoing debates over the H1-B visa system, have sparked outrage, particularly from pro-Trump conservatives.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has come under fire from the right on X following comments that seem to encourage high-skilled immigration to the United States and hiring of foreign workers over local talent, namely in the tech industry.
Musk, who arrived in the U.S. from his home country of South Africa in the early 90s, spoke about a “dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
“If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story,” he continued.
Elon’s remarks follow another huge round of tech lay-offs, which saw over 130,000 jobs from 457 companies cut nationwide this year.
Top American companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and the Musk-headed Tesla made redundancies this year. They also lead the way when it comes to visa sponsorship of foreign workers under the H1-B visa system.
H1-B visas are non-immigrant visas that allow employers to hire highly skilled foreign workers. First introduced in 1991, they have been a sore point for those on the right who feel like the system unfairly prioritises non-American workers because they are often cheaper hires. “100k tech workers laid off this year. “Dire shortage” does not pass the smell test. Let’s face it, salary is a huge factor here, no?,” tweeted one X account holder.
The X CEO’s seeming u-turn has sparked outrage from conservatives, many of whom supported his involvement in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, which made immigration a central issue.
“We need to cultivate American talent - telling young software engineers that they can be replaced by cheap foreign labor at any time is a perverse incentive structure and it will dissuade the best and brightest Americans from entering those fields,” wrote one popular, pro-Trump account.
Some criticism has veered into anti-Indian sentiment, fueled by the appointment of Indian-American entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as a senior AI policy adviser under the incoming Trump administration.
“Did any of yall vote for this Indian to run America?” snarked one critic on Tuesday in a viral tweet. While one popular pro-MAGA, pro-Trump, @LauraLoomer, wrote, ““High skilled immigrant” Doesn’t have running water or toilet paper. Lmao.”
Loomer has since faced backlash from many fellow X users. “India does have many very intelligent people. It doesn’t reflect well on you to demean someone for coming from poverty.”
Musk himself has reportedly retaliated by removing Loomer’s blue tick verification mark and her subscribers. In what seemed like a covert warning, Musk tweeted, “any accounts found to be engaged in coordinated attacks to spam target accounts with mute/blocks will themselves be categorized – correctly – as spam.”
While some users have called Musk’s actions “censorship,” others have defended his stance. Indian-American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy echoed Musk’s comments, tweeting, “America-First means we want America to WIN. Playing for second place doesn’t cut it.”
The clash highlights growing tensions among American conservatives over immigration, the economy and the role of foreign talent in shaping the country’s future.
Australian researchers have pioneered a low-cost and scalable plasma-based method to produce ammonia gas directly from air, offering a green alternative to the traditional fossil fuel-dependent Haber-Bosch process.
A series of earthquakes have struck Guatemala on Tuesday afternoon, leading authorities to advise residents to evacuate from buildings as a precaution against possible aftershocks.
Archaeologists have uncovered a 3,500-year-old city in northern Peru that likely served as a key trade hub connecting ancient coastal, Andean, and Amazonian cultures.
A deadly mass shooting early on Monday (7 July) in Philadelphia's Grays Ferry neighbourhood left three men dead and nine others wounded, including teenagers, as more than 100 shots were fired.
On July 4, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Khankendi, reaffirming the deep-rooted alliance between the two nations.
France recorded over 100 drowning deaths in just one month — a 58% rise from last year — as unusually high temperatures drove more people to water, public health officials say.
Germany’s public debt is projected to climb from 62.5% to 74% of GDP by 2030, driven by record defence and infrastructure spending, according to a report by the European rating agency Scope.
Migration offset natural decline for the fourth consecutive year, pushing the European Union’s population to an historic high of 450.4 million in 2024, according to Eurostat figures released on Friday.
The global oil market may be tighter than headline supply-demand figures suggest, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Friday, citing rising refinery activity and seasonal summer demand as key drivers of short-term market pressure.
China’s exports are expected to have grown 5% in June as manufacturers hurried goods abroad ahead of a 12 August deadline that could see the U.S. restore punitive tariffs, a Reuters survey of economists indicates.
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