Republicans Favor Limiting Legal Immigration, Polls Find

Over the Christmas week, the Trump coalition, which found agreement on securing the border, limiting government spending, and combatting “wokeness,” had its first major public disagreement on legal immigration levels, specifically regarding the H-1B visa. 

Some, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, expressed support for H-1B and similar visas as a way of attracting the best talent from around the world. Others, such as former Congressman Matt Gaetz, argued that the current immigration system is “often abused by big tech” and supported reining in the H-1B program.

Although the minutia of the latest H-1B debate is not easily polled, Americans overall lean toward increasing legal immigration, while Republicans tend to believe it should be decreased. A Pew Research poll from earlier this year found that 30% of U.S. adults favored increasing legal immigration, 22% supported decreasing it, and 46% wanted to maintain current levels. Among Republicans, 31% supported decreasing immigration, while 20% favored increasing it.

The poll also found that the top priority for immigration was highly skilled workers, with 42% saying they should be the top priority and 45% saying they should have “some priority.” Bringing close family members of U.S. residents and laborers to fill shortages were lower priorities, with 19% and 25%, respectively, identifying them as top priorities.

Even some critics of the H-1B visa agreed that America should allow the best scientists and engineers to immigrate but argued that the current system fails to achieve that goal. Gaetz criticized the program, stating, “Big tech will use its lobbying prowess to continue capturing the system merely to max profits at the lowest cost,” but added, “There is no way maintain the ambition edge on the world without some immigration.”

Musk also acknowledged issues with the H-1B program, which has reportedly been used to hire cooks for less than $40,000 annually, despite its intent to fill jobs requiring “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge” and a bachelor’s degree or higher. To combat the misuse of the visa, Musk suggested raising the minimum salary for H-1B workers and “adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B” to make it “materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically.”

However, even Musk’s focus on high-skill tech workers faced opposition in polling. In a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted on Nov. 25 with 1,000 likely voters, respondents were asked whether Congress should expand the number of foreign workers “taking higher-skill U.S. jobs.” Sixty percent said, “The country already has enough talented people to train and recruit for most of those jobs,” while 26% supported increasing the number of foreign workers in high-skill roles.

Despite inflation being the top issue in the election, respondents to the poll were also not in favor of hiring non-Americans for jobs, even if it meant higher prices. The majority, 59%, said it is “better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans even if it causes prices to rise,” while 24% said it is “better for the government to bring in new foreign workers to help keep business costs and prices down.”