Today, Explained - MAGA’s other immigration battle

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

The debate over high-skill work visas is revealing cracks between President Trump and his base. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Miles Bryan, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Hady Mawajdeh, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Astead Herndon. President Trump at the Resolute desk after signing an executive order establishing the "Trump Gold Card" and introducing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So President Trump has been pretty consistent about his feelings regarding illegal immigration to the U.S. All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But when it comes to legal pathways to immigration, Trump's feelings are harder to gauge. The president has gone back and forth on H-1B visas, the ones for high-skilled workers in industries like the United States. tech and medicine. He has said that he has himself used these visas to hire people. And he recently pushed back against Laura Ingram of Fox News, a MAGA loyalist, to defend these visas from right-wing attacks. You also do have to bring in talent when a country...

Well, we have plenty of talented people here. No, you don't. No, you don't. So why is President Trump supporting a program that his MAGA base doesn't like? That's coming up next on Today Explain from Vox. Support for today explained comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue. Fancy, Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Sacks, is where you can find everything like a Chloe bag. What does that look like? Maybe you could buy something for Noel because she likes fancy stuff. If you don't know where to start, sacks.com is customized to your personal style so you could save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays, make shopping fun and easy this season, and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Sacks. 6th Avenue. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder

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H-1B visas have been a simmering issue on the right for years now. A couple months ago, we had the Wall Street Journal's Michelle Hackman on to explain. She said there's been a lot of legitimate abuses of the program. A lot of these visas actually go to companies. There's sort of a whole business model that's sprung up around the H-1B visa of sort of IT companies who staff almost their entire companies with primarily Indian men on H-1B visas.

And their model is that they do IT, you know, a little bit, cheaper than a lot of companies in-house IT offices. And so what's happened over the last 20 or 30 years is that a lot of companies have actually laid off their internal IT and hired these sort of IT external companies on H-1B visas to come work for them instead. This week, we got Michelle back on the line to walk us through the latest. She says, this H-1B visa mess all started back in 2016. Trump takes office, he obviously has all of this anti-immigrant rhetoric, you know, Mexicans are rapists and refugees are all terrorists.

And his movement, you know, sort of involved a lot of, you know, we want to hire more Americans. We don't want jobs to go to foreigners. And so naturally, the H-1B visa became sort of a target in that broader rhetoric. Yeah, you can see how it can find itself in the crosshairs of America first. I know the H-1B very well, and it's something that I frankly use, and I shouldn't be allowed to use. We shouldn't have it. Very, very bad for workers. But during the First Trump administration, you had a lot of competing voices.

You know, Jared Kushner was in the White House, and he was sort of a more old-school Republican pro-business voice. We want to make sure we're bringing in people who will grow GDP, create jobs. We want to attract the best and brightest. We want to welcome people to this country. He was a bigger fan of the H-1B visa program. And so the story of the first Trump administration was you definitely had the MAGA right, hates the H-1B, a lot of other big business owners, including, you know, big tech, love the H-1B. And so you see this sort of, like, policy tug of war taking place where overall, like, nothing really happens. You know, maybe denials for the visa go up a little bit, but for most of the Trump administration, it's not like they made major changes to the program.

What happened during the Biden years? You saw sort of marginal around the edges, Trump and Biden both trying to tweak policies, you know, to make it so that people who are paid better are getting H-1B visas as opposed to people who are being paid lower than Americans, for example. But I wouldn't say anything like particularly ideological happened with the H-1B under Biden. But while Trump was out of office, this sort of tug a war that was happening in the first Trump administration went away, and the Maga right was sort of allowed to, like, foment and cement its anti-H-1B feelings. My dear fellow Americans, I'm introducing a bill to completely eliminate the H-1B visa program. H-1B visas are a total scam that are decimating the American workforce. But I seriously have not met a single American that supports the H-1B visa. visa program. The only people that I see supporting it are Indians. You had people sort of using

more and more strident, sort of racist, anti-Indian language to the point where when Trump is sort of elected for the second time, you see tweets from people basically saying, oh God, you know, we can't be hiring Indians to work at the White House. It's going to smell like curry. So now that Trump is back in office, the visas have become, again, another flashpoint. Because as we know, Trump has made immigration such a cornerstone of his politics, but that's almost exclusively focused on domestic immigration, deportations, and things that are happening, what I would say, not for a college-educated or a highly skilled worker class. What's the state of H-1B visas now? You had Elon Musk come into this administration. The reason I'm in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and 100.

of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. And then really, really publicly exit. As my scheduled time as a special government employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Real Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending. And it was after he exited that this tug of war that we'd been talking about of, you know, America first anti-immigrant voices on one side and sort of more pro-business, you know, big hiring voices on the other side goes away. And suddenly, Stephen Miller's the one in charge.

Our view on H-1Bs is that you cannot displace or replace American workers. He's allowed to do what he wants. And totally out of nowhere, we get this announcement that they're attaching a $100,000 fee to the H-1B visa. So the whole idea is no more will these big tech companies or other big companies train foreign workers? They explicitly say that that is meant to almost shut down the program, that they don't expect a lot of people to pay it. Train Americans, stop bringing in people to take our jobs. So the tug-of-war seems to be won by the Stephen Miller side of the Trump administration, who has effectively imposed the financial penalty in the, in the executive. explicit effort of shutting the program down.

But then we saw Trump say he thinks the U.S. needs to bring in more foreign workers. So self-square this circle for me. What does he mean? Has he been specific about the jobs that he wants to do that for? And how does this interact with what he said? But how should we see this versus the fee on the H-1Bs? So I think it's really interesting and it doesn't totally make sense. You know, Trump hires these people who have these strident, anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant,

They're zealous in their opinions. But from everything we've seen from Trump, he actually doesn't totally believe it himself. Yeah. I also saw him say that he seemed to regret one of the raids that was one of the more notable ones over this summer. Can you tell me about his statement specific to the raid on Korean workers? And how do we think that fits in to his sentiments? This was a raid on a Hyundai plant that was making electrical.

cars. And those people were not on H-1B visas, but I think the themes are similar, right? That raid, you know, was planned by ICE. Trump didn't know about it. They had planned to go in and actually hunt for, you know, Latino construction workers. And in the end, ended up arresting 175 Korean workers who, you know, not all, but typically were working in sort of higher-skilled jobs. You know, making batteries are very complicated. It's not an easy thing. A very dangerous There's a lot of explosions, a lot of problems. And he, I mean, basically, like, went out and disparaged the work of ICE. He was like, that raid shouldn't have happened.

I don't know why they did it. You can't just say a country's coming in going to invest $10 billion to build a plant and going to take people off an unemployment line who haven't worked in five years, and they're going to start making missiles. It doesn't work that way. And he actually arranged with the Korean government to let a lot of those people come back. So should we see this as Trump, maybe seeing the H-1B worker maybe differently than he sees people who come here for asylum-seeking

purposes or other means of immigration? Or should we see this as Trump being deferential to the concerns of business leaders, often of whom have relied on this H-1B group and have a direct access to him in the White House? Where do we think this shift in sentiment's coming from? So you have to remember his dad that it's kind of both because Trump himself was a businessman. He employed a lot of foreign workers himself. And so I think he, you know, it's not just like an influence campaign. I think he sees it from this perspective of those guys where he just doesn't, I think this is where he doesn't actually connect with the MAGA base is that he's like, oh, my God, you know,

when I was running my hotels, I couldn't find Americans who wanted to take these jobs. And so I had to hire people on visas. And it really seems as if, you know, the moments in which Trump is willing to go past his base or incur blowback, to your point, flow from the experiences that he has had and he's comfortable by. And it does seem as if, whether it's as business owner or New Yorker or his relationship with these other CEOs, this is an issue that he might see much more differently than not just the folks in his administration, but also his electoral base. The thing is, instead, it's not like his views have actually shaped the policy of his

administration. Say more about that. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, Trump repeatedly makes these sort of pro foreign worker comments. He's basically pro-H-1B visa. He's pro making it easier for people to get green cards. That is not at all where his base is on this issue. They would like to, I mean, the H-1B has become such a flashpoint that his base has gone beyond, you know, let's fix this IT problem. They want to shut down the H-1B visa. They hate it. They want it to go away. is not there at all, but his administration basically is moving ahead with this $100,000 fee, which is an attempt, you know, doing what they can without Congress to try to shut off access to the H-1B visa program. So we have him making kind of sympathetic statements about folks who receive these visas at the same time making them less accessible by imposing the $100,000 fee. It seems as if it represents something we've seen. across this administration, where there are wildly different views on a macro level and also

sometimes conflicting points of view, even when it comes to the principles in the room. Do we know where this goes next? Like, is there any sense that we could have about maybe the next flashpoint when it comes to this debate? The big thing that we're going to be watching for is our company is going to be willing to pay this gigantic fee. Yeah. And if not, what are they going to do?

You know, are they going to actually try to hire more Americans? Are they going to actually just outsource more jobs? You know, you hear a lot of companies saying, why on earth would I pay this? I'm just going to hire someone in Canada, or I'm going to hire someone remotely, or I'm going to open an office in Europe and sort of work that way because this is crazy and it's not worth it.

Up next, we'll be. We'll hear from an India-born CEO who has some feelings about visas for foreign workers. Support for today, Explain, comes from Udacity. Udacity says they can help you prepare yourself to be able to use IT. Udacity is an online learning platform and has courses in AI and tech, generative AI, agentic AI, Python, data science, so much more. When you learn with Udacity, according to Udacity, you're not just passively watching videos or reading articles, maybe even books,

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The debate over high-skill work inside this very anti-immigration Trump White House gets it something awkward. Maybe what's America first or good for Trump politically isn't what's necessarily good for business in America. Vivek Wadhwa is a long time. tech entrepreneur and runs a medical diagnostics company here in the U.S. His business relies on foreign workers, many of whom are on H-1B visas. And Vivek says that the visa system is broken.

Just not in the way the Trump administration is saying. I came here as an immigrant. I came here as a skilled worker. My father was a diplomat. So I came on a diplomatic visa. And when I came here in 1980, it took 18 months of me to get a green card. And five years later, I was a U.S. citizen. and I became part of, you know, the American success stories.

I founded two companies, employed thousands of people at, you know, at its peak. When I became an academic, several years later, I started researching U.S. competitiveness, and it came down to immigration. From 1995 to 2005, a quarter of all the startups in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. A decade later, the trend had become national, that a quarter of all the startups all across America were founded by immigrants. And if you look at, you know, the top tech companies today, a bunch of Indians who are running them or who are behind the scenes, you know, developing all of the world-changing technologies. Why do you think the H-1B program has been so vital when it comes to entrepreneurship?

Because this is the way skilled immigrants come to the United States, that they come here either students or, Or they come here as workers who are working for American companies. And that's the path to entering the United States. And then they file for a green card after they fall in love with America. And, you know, the process is supposed to take 18 months, not, you know, 70 years. You've recently been writing about your experience with H-1Bs. And you write that it has been ripe for abuse. We heard some of that earlier in the show.

What's been your experiences seeing kind of the system tested in those? ways. Every government program is susceptible to corruption and misuse. They go to body shops, they go to companies looking for cheap labor. And when the H-1B workers do come here and decide that they love America, they want to now become Americans, they're stuck in the same job. You see, what happens is a nasty trick over here, that if you're a computer programmer when you filed your H-1B visa and you become a manager three or four years data, which is what's normal in the tech industry, it's a different job. A person became from software developer to IT manager.

That is a drastic change. New salary, new department, new job duties. Sounds amazing, right? Wrong. So therefore people start to continue doing the same job they did when they started the H-1B process, which means that they're stuck in limbo and they're also making below-market salaries. So the opponents of H-1B visas are correct

in the fact that the system is abused and that it does impact U.S. salaries. You know, one of the things we just learned about was kind of how Trump has sent out mixed signals when it comes to H-1B visas. A lot of parts of his administration have talked against the visas, while he has said in other instances that he finds them to be somewhat effective. Now, they've announced a $100,000 fee on every H-1B visa application. So from your perspective, as someone who has leaned on this as an entrepreneur, what would that fee mean for you? A startup, you know, works on fumes.

You don't have that kind of money. The big, the Googles and the Microsofts and, you know, the oracles, they've got big money, so $100,000 is nothing to them. But to the companies that really need the deep talent to be able to do world-changing innovations, we're on tight budgets. $100,000 is unaffordable. So if I hear you correctly, you're saying the people who are most affected by this proposed fee are the ones in your sphere, maybe not those big costs,

or even, but the ones who are reliant on folks who use these visas, but that $100,000 would be crippling to. Yes, it basically shuts off the system. About two years ago, I was looking to start my medical diagnostics company that's going to now be able to detect diseases. I'll bring it to the United States when the time is right. But the skills I needed for that were electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, experts in plasma physics, thermodynamics,

I needed lab technicians, a lot of skills that you can't readily find in the United States. I needed top-notch mathematicians who understood biology, all right? There are very few of those in the United States, and if they exist, they're outside Silicon Valley. So at first I was looking to raise money over here, build my company over here, and then I realized I simply can't find.

I looked, I mean, it's not that I didn't try. I looked for talent. So I started looking on LinkedIn. for experts across the globe. And there were quite a few of them in India because they still have universities that teach these things. So I was looking to hire them,

and then I said, oh, my God, H-1B, I need to bring them on H-1B visas, and I looked at the numbers, the chances of being able to get. It's literally a lottery. Yeah. And then all the hassles, the fact that you're bringing people in

if they fall in love with America, they can't stay, it was a losing battle. I mean, I knew enough about the system that I said, forget it. I decided to move my company to India. So the United States lost over here. This strikes me that you were kind of coming up against this two years ago,

even before Donald Trump had gotten back into office and then kind of had taken aim at this program more recently. It seems to me as if you would have known that $100,000 number, that could have made that decision a lot easier for you earlier, right? I wouldn't have wasted four months, try to set up a company of Silicon Valley. I would have deal with the venture capitalists over here. I mean, forget it.

I mean, it would have been a no-brainer. You know, you mentioned kind of about being a proud American. You mentioned about what this country has given you. Is there any kind of, I don't know, like a feeling or that when it comes time to build this company here that you're going back to India? Is there anything you owe the United States to build the company here? Absolutely. I owe the United States everything. I wouldn't be where I am.

I wouldn't be able to, you know, do these innovations. I wouldn't have had the opportunities if it wasn't for America. This is my country. I consider myself 100% America. and my loyalties to America. This is why it pains me that I had to build my technology in India. Even though I love India also, I wanted to build my technology here. And I could have raised the money I needed to build the technology here,

but not dealing with all the nightmares and the stigma around H-1B visas and then the delays the $100,000. Because at the end of the day, even if I raise $20 million from Silicon Valley, I'm still a startup. I can't afford $100,000 fees on every employee I hire. A question I have for you is, you know, what do you think the solution is? I mean, we're coming at a point now where H-1Bs have been kind of politicized for several years. There's been so much back-and-forth about what the right level should be.

You get back-and-forth messages from the White House itself. From your perspective of someone who has experienced kind of the system firsthand, what would be the biggest thing that the country could do to make your life easier? Well, number one, free the... people who are trapped in immigration with limbo. They're about one million people who's here legally. I mean, they're working for American companies paying taxes. They can get

a green card immediately, all right? You'd have half a million people buying houses, okay? That would boost the American economy more than his tariffs can, more than anything else can. And then get rid of this stupidity, $100,000 fees and so on. No. Is some of what we're kind of subtly talking

about here, a kind of American cultural thing, too, that we think that, like, you know, because of, maybe because of our education system or because of maybe something of the American worker are just not fit for the emergence of jobs that we have right now? I've written books about this, about the exclusion of minorities, the exclusion of women. I mean, there are a lot of issues here, okay,

and the fact that Americans aren't studying the hard sciences anymore, they aren't studying mathematics anymore. So if we don't bring the skills, engineers and scientists, to the United States, other countries will, or countries like India will have innovation systems that rivaled Silicon Valley. And that breaks my heart. We have to save America from itself.

That was tech entrepreneur, Vivek Wadhwa. This episode was produced by Peter Balinan-Rosen and Miles Bryant, edited by Miranda Vak checked by Hadi Mawadi and Laura Bullard and our engineers are Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly. The rest of the team includes

Avashai Artsy, Danielle Hewitt, Kelly Wessinger, Ariana Asperu, Noel King, Sean Ramosram, Amina Alsadi, and Jolie Myers. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. You know you can listen to the podcast

ad-free by becoming a member of Vox, and we're running a sale so you can think of this as your early Black Friday gift. I'm a Stead Herndon. It's Today Explain. Thank you.