By Garrett J. Snedeker
A recent dust-up within the Trump coalition over America's H-1B visa policy brought a pressing question to the fore: How will the president-elect move forward on the issue that delivered the election, when his own administration seems divided on the details?
Some of his most prominent supporters in the tech industry, which imports a great deal of cheap foreign labor under the H-1B program, have sought to downplay divisions. Incoming White House AI czar David Sacks claimed on X that vocal disagreement between the camps obscures the quiet 95% of agreement on immigration policy. Even after initially offering vocal support for H-1B visas, Elon Musk has charged that the program in its current form is "broken" and endorsed reforms to raise the minimum salary levels covered by the policy, thus reducing the visas' use to undercut American wages.
Tensions have cooled since then, but a lingering distrust between the camps has only added to concerns over how this unusually diverse coalition will make the transition from winning an election to governing effectively.
We have been through this before. In early 2017, all eyes fixed on what the Trump 45 administration's first moves would be on immigration. Those who hope Trump 47 succeeds would do well to recall how, the first time around, early moves undermined the administration's broader effort to secure the border. |