President Donald Trump was criticized by his own supporters after he lamented the lack of "talented" U.S. workers when pressed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham about his H-1B visa program, which allows companies to bring in foreign workers.
Trump, who pledged to take aggressive action on immigration once in office, doubled down on these plans by appointing several key allies to influential roles in immigration policy.
However, Trump has repeatedly shifted his stance on H-1B visas, likely balancing pressure from his base with concerns from the tech industry, which depends heavily on foreign talent.
Recently, he imposed a $100,000 application fee on companies seeking to hire H-1B workers. His administration has also made it harder for the spouses of H-1B visa holders to remain employed while living in the United States.
But MAGA voters have urged him to scrap the program altogether and Ingraham questioned whether it's truly "America First" to keep attracting foreign workers.
Ingraham said:
“If you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.”
When she insisted there are "plenty of talented people here" to Trump's remark that "you also do have to bring in talent," he said:
“No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory, we’re going to make missiles.’”
You can watch their exchange in the video below.
Trump's MAGA base is furious.
Trump's remarks came just two weeks after he told reporters that he was “very much opposed” to the September ICE raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, where authorities detained and deported hundreds of South Korean contractors over immigration violations.
The workers, while not directly employed by Hyundai, were contractors for the automaker and its partner, LG Energy Solutions. The operation provoked outrage in South Korea and cast a shadow over U.S.-South Korea business relations.
Speaking aboard Air Force One as he headed to Asia for meetings with global leaders, including South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Trump said he disagreed with how the raid was handled. Lee, who has criticized the arrests, later warned that the incident had shaken confidence in South Korean investment in the United States.
@WhiteHouse/X
