Trump tasked Musk and Ramaswamy to lead the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. The two took to social media to argue that tech companies such as Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla need workers on H-1B visas because the United States has not prioritized education enough.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk wrote on X, arguing that the tech industry needs to “double” the number of engineers working in the U.S. today and comparing the benefits of the program to a sports team recruiting talent from around the world.

Musk, who once had an H-1B visa, said he used the program to employ and recruit foreign workers at Tesla. 

🚨SILICON VALLEY’S BIGGEST LIMITATION: ENGINEERING TALENT SHORTAGE

The U.S. semiconductor industry alone needs over 160,000 engineers by 2032, driven by $250B+ in new investments.

Demand for AI experts has skyrocketed, with Elon calling the talent war the “craziest” ever.… https://t.co/pssGHDCHWj pic.twitter.com/lsaaU71Oja

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 25, 2024

“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win,” Musk wrote on X.

Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India, agreed with Musk while criticizing U.S. society, saying it has “venerated mediocrity over excellence.”

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” he wrote Thursday. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

However, backlash came swiftly from MAGA supporters who want to see Trump take a hard-line immigration policy with a mass deportation of illegal immigrants instead of an expansion of the H-1B program. 

“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” said Steve Bannon on his War Room show Friday morning, calling the arguments in favor of H-1B a “total scam.” 

Loyal Trump supporters criticized the two tech entrepreneurs over their stance. Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked the two to stay out of immigration policy.

We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender – and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline.

We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy. https://t.co/hgCZTJ0ba9

— Former Congressman Matt Gaetz (@FmrRepMattGaetz) December 26, 2024

“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender – and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” Gaetz wrote in a Thursday social media post. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”

The firestorm began on X after far-right activist Laura Loomer slammed Trump’s decision to name Sriram Krishnan, a venture capitalist born in India, as his artificial intelligence policy adviser. Loomer pointed out Krishnan’s prior support for removing some caps on green cards and making it easier for skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S.

Others are warning the two techs to stay out of immigration policy unless specifically asked by the incoming Trump administration.

“We’ve already started to see a problem where it looks like Musk is calling the shots like what we last saw last week with government funding,” said a GOP Senate aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity in an effort to reflect candidly on the situation. “We need [Musk and Ramaswamy] to stay out of the conversations about immigration policy on social media. It’s divisive, and I’m sure the incoming administration would prefer to have these conversations behind the scenes instead of debating them out in the open.”

“We are about to have a GOP trifecta, and we need to be united as a party, and this only proves to divide us further,” the aide added.

Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments also drew criticism from former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who called on Trump to prioritize American workers over foreign ones. 

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers,” Haley wrote Thursday.

During his first term, Trump restricted access to foreign worker visas and previously criticized the H-1B visa program, which allows 65,000 highly skilled workers to immigrate to the U.S. each year to fill a specific job and grants another 20,000 visas to such workers who have received an advanced degree in the U.S.

During the pandemic, Trump temporarily froze H-1B visas in an effort to try to help Americans dealing with job loss. The Biden administration introduced new rules to update the program by making it easier for international students to receive the visas and by improving the application process.

During this past campaign, Trump appeared to be more open to allowing highly skilled foreigners to come work in the country. In an interview on the All In podcast over the summer, Trump said he would grant permanent residency to any foreigner who graduates from college in the U.S.

“What I want to do, and what I will do is – you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said at the time.

The Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.