Elon, Vivek and how to insult an entire country - the MAGA uproar over H-1B visas fuelling a GOP fracture

It was all bound to unravel. Over the past week or so, to gasps of delight and unbridled told-you-sos from the Democrats, an ugly fracture within the GOP (both in its leadership and its base) has become yawning, and probably unbridgeable. Elon Musk took up the cudgels for Republican unity, and the whole party now looks a bit like Humpty Dumpty, post-plummet.

It all began as a kerfuffle about a special visa, previously unknown to most Americans and affecting less than 85,000 people per year. It is called the H-1B and it has been around in some form since 1952. If you are a foreigner and can show that you are highly skilled or educated in some critical area of expertise (which changes periodically), you can come to the US and work legally for six years. Then you can re-apply. The upshot is that about 500,000 people are currently employed under this law; some have renewed their visas for decades.

None of this has been particularly controversial - there are many countries that offer similar enticements to the smartest of the global pack. But two developments have impacted on the situation over the past 10 years.

The first is the ascendance of foreign (or foreign-born) CEOs and wildly successful entrepreneurs, particularly in STEM careers, many of them from the Indian subcontinent and working at companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, FedEx, Adobe and Micron, among others. This includes Vivek Ramaswamy, now Musk’s partner at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The second matter is the rise of MAGA, that large but diverse group of GOP voters energised by US president-elect Donald Trump, many of whom are fervently nationalist, globally isolationist and suspicious of foreign influence of any kind. To be fair, there are many other strings to MAGA’s bow - including matters of culture, climate, minority rights and religion - but fierce patriotic tribalism is the hot core of many, if not most, of Trump’s MAGA minions.

These people are simply not happy about Indian-born CEOs. Or Indian-born Trump advisers, including the guy whose appointment seems to have been the spark that ignited this blazing row, Sriram Krishnan, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist appointed by Trump to work with David Sacks on Trump’s AI policy advisory team.

The fissure probably started with a single outraged tweet from some well-followed MAGA member posting on X who doesn’t like people with funny names, swarthy skins and “shithole” birthplaces. And then it spread quickly. Musk was not happy. Not only has he personally benefited from preferential visa programmes, but he has also hired liberally from abroad under H-1B regulations. When the owner of X is not happy, two things happen: everyone hears about it, and then people on X start getting censored, notwithstanding his so-called commitment to free speech. (This happened to Laura Loomer, a far-right-wing activist who loudly objected to Musk’s support of the visa.)

There was a flurry of explosive tweets from Musk. 

The most startling of them had him talking about visa detractors as “contemptible fools”. Not lost on anyone was that the adjective “contemptible” is pretty close to “deplorable”, which was used by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and we all know what happened there. There was even a DeploraBall held in Washington after Trump’s first presidential inauguration.

Musk further suggested that his detractors be removed from the GOP “root and stem”.

He then went nuclear, posting: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Okay then, battle lines are drawn, in no uncertain terms. But before we proceed (and notwithstanding a bunch of other screechy Musk posts) consider this: Elon Musk, favoured Trump appointee, had told a couple of tens of millions of Trump voters that not only were they not welcome in the Republican Party, but they should also go f**k themselves. In the face, which presumably is a much worse place than any other, erm, opening. Oh, and he threatened his detractors with “war”-speak. 

Oh dear.

Reaction was swift. Not only on social media, but among the MAGA elite; people like ex-Trump consigliere Steve Bannon and incoming administration adviser, immigration hawk and grim reaper Steve Miller.

But then it got worse. His partner at DOGE, Vivek Ramaswamy, decided to wade in. One can’t imagine how he could top Musk, but he did. A lengthy post on X is distilled by this extract:

“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. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”