Late last year, Elon Musk inflamed a brutal schism in MAGA-world after promising he would “go to war” to defend the H-1B visa system. Now, as Donald Trump imposes a $100,000 charge on each new application, Musk is quiet — and smiling alongside the president at Charlie Kirk’s funeral.
The war over Christmas
The Tesla and SpaceX chief has long been one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent defenders of the H-1B program, which allows U.S. companies to bring in skilled workers when no domestic candidates can be found.
The program became a flashpoint after Trump supporters raged against venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan’s appointment as the White House’s new AI senior policy director, with the uproar quickly morphing into a fierce debate over H-1B visas and skilled immigration.
Krishnan, an Indian-American entrepreneur, has publicly advocated for an expansion of the program by removing country caps, which was seen in opposition to Trump’s “America First” base that worries about immigrants taking jobs Americans could otherwise do.
Far-right activist Laura Loomer led the charge, blasting Krishnan as a threat to Trump’s “America First” agenda, while allies like Matt Gaetz derided “tech bros” for shaping immigration policy. That led to Musk, who said he entered the U.S. himself on an H-1B visa as a South African-born entrepreneur, to enter into the debate.
“There is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America,” Musk posted on Christmas Eve. “If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE.”
When hard-liners in the MAGA movement attacked the program as un-American, Musk lashed back in profane terms: “Take a big step back…I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
His posts ignited a bitter MAGA feud, unleashing vitriolic and often racist attacks on H-1B immigrants — particularly Indians, who make up 71% of visa holders.
Pharma billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy was reportedly kicked out of his job co-leading DOGE after a post defending H1-B visas upset Trump.
A few days before the New Year, Musk had softened publicly, conceding that the system was “broken,” and suggesting fixes like higher salary thresholds and yearly costs to ensure companies don’t exploit cheap labor.
Trump’s $100K shock
Fast forward nine months, and Trump is now taking that logic to the extreme.
On Friday, the president issued a proclamation requiring a $100,000 payment with every new H-1B petition — a move Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick first suggested could be annual. The White House later clarified the fee is one-time only, applied to new applications, not renewals. Still, the shock was immediate.
Bay Area venture capitalist Deedy Das warned the policy would gut startups’ financial runway and choke America’s ability to attract global talent.
“If you stifle even that, it just makes it that much harder to compete on a global level,” he told CBS. Smaller founders called it a catastrophe.
Netflix cofounder and Democratic mega-donor Reed Hastings broke ranks, hailing the fee as a “great solution” that would eliminate the lottery and reserve visas for “very high-value jobs.” But Hastings’ take seems to put him in the minority.. Most of the industry seems to view the measure as a body blow that will hurt tech companies’ ability to hire the best talent.
Musk’s silence on the issue
Against this backdrop, Musk’s silence is striking. His relationship with Trump has been on a rollercoaster since the Christmas H-1B debacle. Once Trump’s “first buddy” in the White House and the biggest Republican donor of 2024, Musk broke publicly with the president in June over Trump’s tax-and-spending plan, blasting its impact on U.S. debt and clean-energy incentives.
The feud escalated fast: Musk called for Trump’s impeachment, warned his tariffs would spark a recession, and even claimed Trump’s name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Trump fired back by threatening to sic Musk’s own Department of Government Efficiency on his companies and told NBC their relationship was “over.” Since then, Musk has been quiet on Trump.
Yet on Sunday, the two appeared together for the first time since that bitter clash, smiling and shaking hands at Charlie Kirk’s memorial.
Whether Musk is holding back to protect his fragile truce with Trump or to quietly endorse the logic of higher costs, the silence is striking — a far cry from his Christmas vow to “go to war” for immigrant engineers like himself.