Elon Musk and Bernie Sanders agree on how to reform the suddenly controversial immigration program. But the real conflict here is within the parties, not between them.

Tesla founder Elon Musk is a vocal proponent of H-1B visas, and his company's use of the program jumped sharply this year.

Vivek Ramaswamy has said that Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday will bring the "dawn of a new Golden Age."

The cracks between the tech broligarchs who are now flocking around Trump and the populist MAGA movement that launched him began to reveal themselves in late December when the provocateur Laura Loomer started attacking the H-1B visa, which facilitates the staffing of a significant portion of the tech industry.

Tesla laid off roughly 6,600 workers. According to labor statistics, it filed about 1,300 H-1B visa applications around the same time.

Tesla laid off roughly 6,600 workers in spring 2024 — around the same time labor statistics show the company filed about 1,300 H-1B visa applications.

Republicans may not know it yet, but they’re in the process of handing Steve Bannon a powerful weapon to wield in his war with Elon Musk over visas granted to high-skilled immigrants. This could further divide the MAGA coalition over immigration—and badly inconvenience Musk,

Instead, this issue is pitting self-described populist anti-immigration MAGA hard-liners like Steve Bannon against Trump advisers such as Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and Sriram Krishnan - all successful businesspeople, and all strong supporters of skilled immigration and a country open to talent.

It's not really surprising that immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs and take more risks: If you're looking for people with "get up and go," look for people who got up and went. And this entrepreneurship among the foreign-born students in master's degree programs helps inspire entrepreneurship among their American-born classmates.

The MAGA coalition continues to bicker over the merits of the H-1B visa. Inc. 5000 leaders are mixed on whether these visas are helpful – or even feasible – for their businesses.

When Vivek and Elon speak of mass deportation of immigrants, they are speaking about the ones that don’t look like, sound like or are not educated like them.