Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has taken a swipe at Elon Musk’s protection of the H-1B visa program, which has pushed a wedge between two factions of President-elect Trump’s most ardent supporters.
Sanders, who has lengthy argued for elevating wages for employees within the U.S., criticized the rich tech entrepreneur’s elevation of the international visa system, arguing that it additional enriches a handful of the nation’s richest folks.
“Elon Musk is wrong,” the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist wrote in an announcement launched on Thursday, which he promoted on Musk’s platform, X.
“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,” he wrote. “The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”
Musk and Trump seem like at the moment in alignment on the advantages of hiring people with particular technical capabilities from international locations like India, arguing that there’s a scarcity of U.S natives with comparable abilities.
This system is common with know-how companies, which use H-1B visas to assist scale their firms, usually extra inexpensively.
However it’s come beneath hearth in current weeks, particularly amongst Trump’s personal working-class supporter base, who largely share the place that Sanders articulated in his assertion.
The Vermont senator took goal at one in all Musk’s most well-known firms for instance of how counting on such applications can negatively influence employees throughout the nation struggling to carry onto their jobs.
“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?” he continued.
Sanders additionally used the contentious debate to push for his signature proposed minimal wage improve, which has been stagnant at $7.25 per hour.
“Bottom line,” he wrote, “It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker.”
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