Lawmakers in Washington today will certify the votes of the 2024 election, ushering in a second term for President-elect Donald Trump and what will likely be a major shift in immigration policy for the next four years.
Trump has promised mass deportations and a major crackdown on undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. But lately, some of Trump’s closest advisers disagree about a certain group of immigrants here: high skilled workers here on what are called H-1B visas. They often work in the tech sector.
To explain it all, The Show spoke to Elvia Díaz, editorial page editor of the Arizona Republic.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: So let’s begin by just having you explain this kind of disagreement within Trump’s camp. You’ve got some folks like Elon Musk championing bringing in the most talented workforce, even if that means from out of the country. And then you’ve got folks like Nikki Haley saying there’s nothing wrong with America’s workforce, and that’s who we should be prioritizing.
Explain this for us.
ELVIA DÍAZ: It all began when Trump’s closest advisers, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who began talking about specifically the H-1B visa, which is predominantly used by the high tech industry, essentially saying this is the kind of program, the visa program that needs to be saved, that needs to be even expanded.
And so immediately, you had a swift reaction from some of the MAGA folks saying, “No, no, absolutely not. This is hypocrisy. We need to get rid of it. These high skilled workers are replacing American jobs.”
And so you had a whole discussion about the American culture, and Ramasamy specifically was saying that part of the need and why America has this kind of visa is because the American culture is such that we don’t produce that type of high skilled workers.
I mean, he didn’t essentially say it, but that’s what he meant. And so that’s why you had Nikki Haley and others saying, “No, there was nothing wrong with our workforce. We can produce our own workers.”
And since then, we know that President Trump has said that he, in fact, likes the program, that Elon Musk is right. And we know that Musk himself, he was not born here in America. So that’s how he came. So that’s where we stand.
And to me it shows all the hypocrisy of MAGA and Trump himself. Now we’re talking about getting rid of immigrants. Then you begin to see, well, maybe not all of them.
I was waiting for something like this because I sort of had a feeling that when it comes to them, when it comes to what benefits some of these people personally, they’ll fight it.
GILGER: Right. So what do you think this says about what may be to come from a Trump administration on this mass deportation? Do you think it will be sort of selective then?
DÍAZ: It absolutely will be selective. And this is a prime example of that. It’s recognizing that America needs foreign workers in various sectors, and in this case we’re talking about the high tech industry. And the criticism is that even at this level — we’re talking about engineers, we’re talking about all sorts of very, very high level folks that are coming — that they do recognize that they need it at any price.
GILGER: So let me ask you then, about a conversation you had recently with incoming U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego. And you asked about immigration. What did he say is on his agenda, at least from the minority party perspective here?
DÍAZ: It is very interesting because he got elected by moving to the center from left of center. And he has specifically said that he’s going to wait. And I think that was sort of smart. You know, the question was specifically about mass deportations or this kind of visa.
And he said we don’t know exactly what the Trump administration is going to do. We know what his people have been saying. We know that kind of groundwork that they’re laying already, you know, for massive preparations for. And now there’s this issue about the high tech visas. So he said we’re going to wait and see. But he also mentioned that there is always an opportunity to work. Maybe there’s common ground.
If you support legal migration and you support bringing people in legally, of course you would support something like this, regardless of who’s proposing that. In this case it's Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Of course you’re going to say yes, but what is that going to mean for the American worker?
It’s just very interesting because Trump got elected promising to get rid of immigrants and focus on American workers and the working class. And the working class are not getting this type of job.
But going back to Ruben Gallego, he essentially said, “We’ll wait and see.”
GILGER: Any chance you think that this Congress in particular will succeed where the last Congress failed in passing some kind of comprehensive immigration reform, even the kind that president elect Trump killed in the last Congress?
DÍAZ: Oh my goodness, I don’t know. I wish I had the answer. But let’s remember that it was Ronald Reagan in 1986, a Republican, the last president that was able to approve a vast immigration reform. So it is possible that it will be under Republicans, and Democrats will be smart to take it. We also know that it was under President Obama and others, when they had the opportunity, when Democrats had control of both the House and the Senate, they decided not to use any political capital to do any immigration reform in a meaningful way.
So if you are losing money, if you’re not getting the workers that you need, then you will do something about it. And if they can’t hire Americans — and we’re specifically talking about the high skilled workers here — but if you can’t hire Americans for that or for any other type of jobs, then their industries themselves are going to pressure Trump and the administration to do something about it.
And it is possible that it may happen. I’m just not hopeful right now.
