The MAGA alliance that helped elect Donald Trump is starting to show signs of fracturing. It recently came to a head after an important argument broke out over H-1B visas between Silicon Valley and the nativist wing. We talk with Atlantic staff writer Ali Breland, who writes about the internet, technology, and politics, about the public infighting, and staff writer Rogé Karma takes us beyond the politics by discussing what the research shows about the relationship between immigrant labor and the American worker. Extra listening: Rogé Karma on Good on Paper. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the signs of fracturing in Trump's coalition?
There are already cracks starting to show in the Magall lines. And those cracks happen to show up in the issue that Trump has declared one of his top priorities, which is drastically reshaping U.S. immigration policy. Trump appointed to a senior position someone seen as being friendly to H-1B visas, the visas that allow people with specialized skills to work in the U.S.,
People in Silicon Valley love these visas. They depend on them. And maybe more importantly, the H-1B visa lovers include Elon Musk. But the America First wing of Trump supporters, sometimes known as the nativist right, they do not love these visas. America First to them means literally Americans first. No exceptions. I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic.
On today's show, we'll talk about this MAGA infighting. In the second half of the show, we'll get into what's actually true about the relationship between immigration and the American worker. Because it turns out that even a lot of Democrats don't get that one right. But first, let's dive into the recent news and what it means.
To help me with that is Ali Breland, an Atlantic staff writer who writes about the internet, politics, and technology. Hey, Ali.
Chapter 2: Who is Sriram Krishnan and why is he important?
Hey, thank you for having me.
So, Ali, this fracture in the MAGA alliance seemed to start around Christmas when Trump announced a senior AI policy advisor. Who is he and how did people respond?
Yeah, his name is Sriram Krishnan. He's the Silicon Valley figure who has like a long history. He works in tech and he was being appointed to be an advisor on Trump's AI team, which is being headed up by another big guy in tech, David Sachs, who's a part of the infamous PayPal mafia that includes Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc.,
So these are like, this is a faction. Like these guys are becoming more and more powerful. So Trump's tech allies.
Yeah, there's like some like different ideological things happening. But for the most part, they're largely on the same page. And like a lot of people right now are kind of calling them the new tech right or just like the tech right.
So they're on one side. And then how did the discussion around H-1B visas get going?
Yeah, so there's this provocateur troll in Trump world called Laura Loomer. She's been kind of this weird thing on the right for a long time. She's chained herself to the headquarters of Twitter in protest of her account being banned at one point. But she sees this appointment and she decides to make hay of it.
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Chapter 3: What is the role of H-1B visas in the immigration debate?
She pulls out a tweet that Krishnan made about country caps for green cards, rather, and high-skilled immigration. And she points to these things and says, this is like not what we want. This is not America first. These things are not good for our constituency. And so that's like the sort of obvious bit of it.
The other bit, too, is you can kind of see how race is like this animating issue in this fight. David Sachs had already been appointed by Trump to be his chief advisor on issues of AI and crypto. David Sachs has talked about H-1B visas. He's pushed Trump on this. He's successfully gotten Trump to say that he would support the continued use of H1B visas.
But Loomer didn't attack him on that and didn't turn this into a huge issue. Instead, she went after Sriram Krishnan, who is South Asian. And I think it's, you know, her targeting him specifically on this issue and associating him with that kind of speaks to the sort of like nativist sentiment undergirding all of this.
Kind of right after the election, I sort of thought that maybe there was a chance that there was going to be some sort of fractious element at some point in the future, because these are two sides that kind of believe sort of different things. The tech right is reactionary like the nativist right that includes people like Laura Loomer, people like Steve Bannon.
They sort of all have this streak of like being frustrated with the progress that's taken place in America. They are frustrated with what they see as like American weakness. But the distinction is that the tech right also loves business. They love being rich. They love making a lot of money and having their industry be benefited.
The sort of nativist right cares much more about the American constituency and specifically the white American constituency and benefiting what they see as like the natural order of whiteness and the average American and things that some people in the tech right kind of care about but prioritize less than their own companies and less than their own industry.
It's really complicated because they both have ideas like there's an optimum society, there's a right way that things should be, and then they're slightly different. So what does each side's ideal America made great again look like?
Yeah, I think on the sort of nativist right, the ideal America is this place that prioritizes, with some exceptions more so now, but like fundamentally it's this like white sort of very classic conventional conservative vision for what the United States is. It's this like return fantasy to a version of the 1950s America that prioritizes like white American interests above other people.
Again, with exceptions, there's You know, these people would all say that they're not racist, that they're just like meritocratic or things like that. The tech right is more agnostic to those kinds of things.
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Chapter 4: How do H-1B visas affect American workers' job market?
That could change when we sort of get like harrowing images of ICE conducting raids and things like that. But right now, that's the track that we're on.
Chapter 5: What do studies say about immigrants and job competition?
Chapter 6: How does the tech right differ from the nativist right?
Elon seemed to like, I don't want to say he walked back from this position, but like after a few days of fighting, he did seem to try to like want to soften the blows and sort of extend an olive branch. People in
Sort of fairly influential but niche figures in this sort of like nationalist reactionary wing of the party also tried to sort of smooth over the tension and make it seem like there was like common cause being found. And so they have an interest among themselves in trying to come together and paint themselves as a united front and sort of like reach a consensus on this.
Yeah, I mean, it's still early. He hasn't even taken office yet. But could you imagine a universe where then it just moves forward and we quietly make an exception for elite workers and do mass deportations for everyone else? Like, is that where immigration policy could land?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that from my perspective and the things I pay attention to, that seems exactly the direction it's going to go in. The tech right is aware of the mass deportations, has not really talked out against them. Elon Musk has tweeted acknowledging them and sees them as an inevitability that he doesn't seem to have a clear problem with.
That could change when we sort of get like harrowing images of ICE conducting raids and things like that. But right now, that's the track that we're on.
So if what you said is true and if the past history holds, he is going to make an exception for elite immigrant workers. What does that imply about how he might handle other economic issues?
Yeah, that if we extrapolate this out, which we can both from this example, but then also from how 2016 through 2020 went, Trump is probably going to side, I guess, with more of the wealthier faction, which includes the tech right, which includes people in his coalition who are people like the hedge fund manager, Scott Besson, who also sort of have this this prioritization of wealth.
More like economically laissez-faire issues, they have this sort of more traditional conservative perspective on economics. And that's something that's going to run at attention with what the nationalists want.
They want this sort of economic nationalist perspective that is a departure from this hyper free market sort of way of viewing the world that's been the dominant conservative perspective for the past several decades. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What implications does Trump's stance on immigration have?
Interesting. So this is actually this is the central fissure of the Trump administration.
Yeah. Yeah, it seems like that. I do want to say that this is kind of a unique issue in that it draws in race, which is a very big thing, and it draws in immigration. And so it might get a uniquely high amount of attention, but there's still going to be versions of this fight that might not play out as aggressively that are going to happen over the next four years.
Well, Ali, thank you for pointing out this line to us. We'll be watching it for the next four years, and thank you for joining me.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
After the break, we explore what's behind the politics. Trump and his allies made the argument often in the campaign that immigrants take away jobs from Americans. It's an argument that on the surface has some intuitive logic, but it actually doesn't work like that. More soon.
I'm Carla Lally Music, cookbook author and curable food lover and the host of Sweets Unwrapped, a new podcast from Ferrero and Atlantic Rethink, the Atlantic's creative marketing studio. Have you ever wondered where the hazelnuts and Nutella come from or how Keebler has stuck around for over a century?
Whether you've got a sweet tooth or curious about flavor science or want to know what's next in the world of R&D, tune in to Sweets Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts.
Joining me is Atlantic staff writer Roger Karma, who mainly covers economics. Roger, welcome to the show.
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
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Chapter 8: Will there be exceptions for elite immigrant workers?
And so any immigrant that we bring in is going to take away a job that would otherwise go to an American. But when researchers have looked at this, the overwhelming majority of the studies have actually found no negative impact on either employment or wages, which I think at first sounds a little bit counterintuitive. But the reason is a fewfold.
One, companies who get H-1B workers actually end up growing and scaling up faster than the companies who don't. And then because of that, they have to then hire a bunch of more native-born workers around that immigrant. The second reason is innovation. One of my favorite statistics comes from Jeremy Newfield, who's a fellow at the Institute for Progress. And he pointed out that 30% of U.S.
patents, almost 40% of U.S. Nobel Prizes in science, and more than 50% of billion-dollar U.S. startups belong to immigrants. Now, not all of those are H-1B holders, but there's a lot of evidence that the companies who are awarded H-1B visas, they produce more patents, more new products, get more VC funding, and all of that actually creates jobs.
So on the whole, I actually don't think there's a lot of evidence for this broader nativist claim about this program.
Let's make this a little more concrete. So let's just play out a theoretical company. Here's a theoretical company, hires H-1B visa holders. How does it work? Like innovation is a vague word. How does it actually play out?
I think what's important to remember here is that getting one of these H-1B visas is actually pretty difficult. And so the idea that a company is going to be able to systematically bring in foreign workers to replace their native ones using this program, it's just really hard to do because there's such a low chance they're even going to get those workers in the first place.
And so a lot of times when companies use this program, what they're doing is they're looking for a very important skill set. So let's use semiconductors as an example. This is an industry, when it comes to the manufacturing of semiconductors, that US companies haven't really done for a while.
A lot of the most advanced chips are made in places like Taiwan, and so a lot of the best talent is abroad. And so if you're a US semiconductor manufacturer, The industry in the US estimates that even if we had the best job training programs possible, that would only fill about 50 percent of the high skill demand for the labor force in this field.
So you need to bring in folks who have this highly specialized knowledge, probably because they've worked in other countries, But then what that allows you to do, once you have a subset of foreign born workers who can do this sort of specialized manufacturing, what you then have is then you have people to come in and support around them.
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