Bernie Sanders accuses Musk of seeking cheaper, not brainier, immigrant labor with H-1B visas

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders weighed in on the H-1B visa controversy Thursday, accusing Elon Musk of defending the program because the labor is “cheaper,” not brainier, than the American labor force, as the tech billionaire has argued.

The debate over the H-1B visa has divided MAGA over the past week. Musk has backed the visas for skilled foreign workers while Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon have bashed the program as not putting American workers first and carving them out of higher-paying jobs.

Musk has argued that foreign labor tends to be more highly skilled, and last week endorsed a post on X that denigrated American workers with a slur, calling them “re***ded.”

Sanders wrote on X Thursday: “Elon Musk is wrong. The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.”

The “cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make,” Sanders added.

Sanders, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, called for “major reforms” to the H-1B program in a statement attached to his X post.

After citing Census Bureau figures and other data, Sanders seemed to challenge Musk directly by asking about Tesla’s hiring practices: “If there is really a shortage of skilled tech workers in America, why did Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers this year – including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas – while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers?”

Sanders then wondered why Tesla employed “H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?” He said: “Those don’t sound like highly specialized jobs that are for the top 0.1 percent as Musk claimed this week.”

Like Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have argued, Sanders said, the U.S. needs a “highly skilled and well-educated workforce.” But to do that, the country shouldn’t be bringing in “cheap labor from abroad,” but should be hiring “qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future,” he said.

“Bottom line. It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker,” Sanders said. “We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms in the H-1B program.”

The issue of the visa program created a schism among President-elect Donald Trump’s allies. The debate became so heated that Musk even vowed to go to “war” on the issue.

Over the weekend, Trump came out in support of H-1B visas, telling Fox News he was a “believer” in the visa program. But in his first administration, Trump signed an executive order to restrict access to such visas.