'Definitely going to use it': Bannon exploiting bill to drive wedge between Trump and Musk

18 January

Steve Bannon — President-elect Donald Trump's former chief White House strategist — may have just gotten an edge over his rival, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, thanks to a bill likely to pass with bipartisan support.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent wrote Saturday that one provision in the Laken Riley Act currently being debated in Congress could be exploited by what Bannon calls the "populist right" to get a major edge in his immigration-based civil war with the Silicon Valley wing of the MAGA movement (which is led by billionaire executives like Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy). Should the bill become law, language that allows state attorneys general to sue to block the admission of migrants from specific countries could throw a wrench in the gears of the H-1B visa program, which corporations rely on to hire foreign workers.

"We’re definitely going to use it, and we’re going to get after attorneys general," Bannon said. "We certainly will call for state A.G.s to do this."

Bannon is specifically hoping Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton will take advantage of the Laken Riley Act to argue that immigrants from a country like India — which supplies numerous tech companies with foreign workers — shouldn't get visas. This could complicate hiring at companies like Tesla and SpaceX, as Musk has argued that American workers are simply not as good as their foreign counterparts.

"There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley," Musk tweeted on Christmas Day.

The president-elect has already sided with Musk in the H-1B visa fight, despite his previous statements railing against the program. While he said H-1B visas were "a cheap labor program" that was used for the "explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay" during his 2016 campaign, he's since said it was important "to have the most competent people in our country." But Bannon believes that Trump — who he still supports — will ultimately embrace his nativist approach.

"I believe strongly that President Trump will have our back," Bannon said.

Click here to read Sargent's full report in the New Republic (subscription required).

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