President Donald Trump prompted backlash among his political base this week for a recent interview during which he claimed the U.S. needs the H-1B visa system because the country lacks “certain talents” for some industries.
During an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that aired Monday night, Trump pushed back when Ingraham was critical of H-1B visas, which provide temporary work permits for specialty occupations such as tech and engineering.
In response to Ingraham arguing that such visas flood the market and suppress U.S. wages, Trump said, “Well, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent.”
When Ingraham insisted the U.S. has “plenty of talented people here,” Trump said, “No, you don’t. No, you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn.”
????I PRESSED President Trump on H-1B visas.????
“If you want to RAISE WAGES for Americans, you can’t flood the country with THOUSANDS of foreign workers.”@POTUS: “You have to bring in talent… You can’t take people off the unemployment line and say, ‘go make missiles.’”
The… pic.twitter.com/lB4wWuRKGK
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) November 12, 2025
The H-1B visa system has received bipartisan criticism from those who claim it exploits foreign workers and depresses American wages.
When he ran for president in 2016, Trump pledged to get rid of the H-1B program entirely, and during his first term he tightened restrictions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020, he suspended issuing any new H-1B visas through the end of that year.
Both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy drew the ire of the MAGA base in 2024 for coming out in support of the H-1B program in the wake of Trump’s election victory. In September, Trump signed an executive order that slapped a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions “to curb abuses that displace U.S. workers and undermine national security.”
In an op-ed for Fox News published in January, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Musk was “dead wrong,” calling the H-1B visa program a “mess” that hurts both American and foreign workers by allowing corporations to hire what he called “indentured servants” at lower pay.
“The primary purpose of H-1B and other guest worker programs is not to employ the ‘best and the brightest,’ but instead to replace American workers with lower-paid workers from abroad who often live as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multi-billionaire owners of large corporations make,” he wrote.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends” that the administration intends to use H-1B visas temporarily so that foreign workers can train American workers in certain skills, after which the H-1B visa holders will be repatriated.
???? BREAKING: Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent says President Trump’s plan for visas is to TEMPORARILY bring in expert overseas workers to train Americans, they they go BACK home.
“Train the US workers. Then, go home. Then, the US workers fully take over.”
KILMEADE: You understand… pic.twitter.com/vDbabSVxDW
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 12, 2025
Many conservative influencers who are generally supportive of the president expressed dismay on social media at his comments on H-1B visas, with some claiming he has abandoned the platform that got him elected and warning it could lead to devastating Republican losses in the midterm elections next year.
Savannah Hernandez, a contributor to Turning Point USA, posted to X that Trump’s comments as “disheartening.”
“Trump needs to get out of his bubble and back on the ground listening to the American people who elected him to work for us. His H-1B comment shows how out of touch with the base he has become,” she wrote.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who is one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, came out against H-1Bs in the wake of his comments.
“I believe in the American people. I am one of you. I believe you are good, talented, creative, intelligent, hard working, and want to achieve. I am solidly against you being replaced by foreign labor, like with H1Bs,” she wrote in a lengthy X post.
“The Roman Republic collapsed into civil war in large part because the wealthy elite collaborated with the political class to mass import foreign slave labor and disenfranchise the Roman citizen,” podcast host Jesse Kelly wrote. “Seems relevant.”
“This is insane — we are going to lose the mid-terms so badly,” said Anthony Sabatini, who serves as Lake County Commissioner in Florida. “We’ve never seen an administration crash [and] burn in its first year so badly — for no reason other than to appease donors [and] special interests… Trump has surrounded himself with the worst people.”
“Trump broke everyone’s heart with this line about the American workforce and H-1B’s,” wrote commentator Mike Cernovich.
Many also took issue with similar comments from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who on Wednesday praised the idea of more immigration, saying the Trump administration has “sped up our process and added integrity to the visa programs… but also more people are becoming naturalized under this administration than ever before.”
“What is going on in the Trump admin? Who told them MAGA was all about mass immigration as long as the paperwork gets filed properly?” asked Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson. “We don’t need more paper Americans, we need fewer foreigners taking jobs that should go to actual Americans.”
“Kristi Noem basically saying, ‘We’re making sure AOC or Gavin Newsom have more voters in 2028,” wrote author and political consultant Ryan Girdusky.
During a Wednesday episode of “The War Room,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon likened the H-1B program to indentured servitude.
“I think we’ve got enough folks for right now, until everybody gets a good, high-paying, high value-added job,” Bannon said.
BANNON: Now you’ve got Bessent and a whole new crew saying it’s just temp training, specific industries, a couple years. The H1B scam is indentured servitude, competing against Americans for lower wages. We have 12M STEM workers sidelined. That’s a national tragedy. We don’t need… pic.twitter.com/6tiRJKGsFu
— Grace Chong, MBI (@gc22gc) November 12, 2025
