President Donald Trump defended H-1B visas during an interview that aired Tuesday evening, arguing that foreign labor is sometimes needed because American workers don’t have “particular talents.”
Trump made the comments during an interview with Fox News when asked whether his administration would prioritize costly visas that allow skilled workers from abroad to work temporarily in the United States. He said the United States should “bring talent.”
When pressed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said: “We have a lot of talented people here,” Trump responded: “No, you don’t – you don’t have certain talents. And you have to – people have to learn.”
Trump has promoted securing investments from abroad, including those that would boost the auto and artificial intelligence industries. But he noted in the interview that some American workers may not be best prepared for different stages of production.
“You can’t take people off unemployment, like the unemployment line, and say, ‘I’ll put you in a factory,'” Trump said.
He added: “You can’t say that a country is going to come, invest $10 billion to build a factory, take people off the unemployment line who haven’t worked for five years, and start making their own missiles. That’s not working well.”
Trump’s comments acknowledging the role immigrants play in economic growth and innovation contrast with some of his messaging during his administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has made life more difficult for many immigrants who are in the United States legally.
In September, Trump signed a proclamation raising the fees companies must pay for H-1B worker visas to $100,000, a move that represented a win for immigration hardliners on Capitol Hill but a more costly hurdle for tech executives seeking qualified workers from abroad.
Weeks before Trump returned to office, some of his allies erupted into a fight over the H-1B visa program, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law in 1990.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former 2024 Republican presidential candidate who Trump endorsed for governor of Ohio, has come under fire for writing in an op-ed Social media sharing In December, he said that American culture “honors mediocrity over excellence,” and that “a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the Math Olympiad champion, or the jock at the expense of the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
Elon Musk, a Trump ally, at the time, defended technology companies that hire “the best talent wherever they are” in order to be the best.
Ramaswamy and Musk’s comments drew harsh criticism from some Trump allies who have advocated a tough approach to immigration across the board and revealed a point of tension between the president’s allies on Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley executives.
Trump also talked about making changes to immigration laws for other sectors. Earlier this year he rolled out a “temporary pass” for migrant farmworkers amid growing concerns about the agricultural workforce following ICE operations.
Trump said at the time that farming is “hard work, and a lot of people won’t do it, and you end up destroying farms because you took all the people. It’s a problem.”