'They got a lesson': MAGA vows to ramp up immigration fight with tech billionaires

President-elect Donald Trump ended up siding with billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk in their feud with MAGA activists over a contentious immigration issue. But Trump's anti-immigrant base isn't planning to give up easily.

That's according to a Friday report in Politico, which delved into the still-raging fight over H-1B visas for migrant workers. Both Musk and billionaire pharmaceutical investor Vivek Ramaswamy took public stances in favor of increasing H-1B visas despite pro-Trump influencers like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon (Trump's former chief White House strategist) calling on Trump to curb new H-1B admissions.

In late December, Musk defended his position by saying foreign-born workers brought in through the H-1B visa program were more preferable to the tech industry than American workers, saying Americans lacked the proper education and training needed to work for companies like Tesla and SpaceX. He added that the anti-migrant MAGA base were "contemptible fools" who needed to be "removed from the Republican Party, root and stem."

READ MORE: 'We want retribution': Atlantic staffer warns MAGA is even more disturbing in-person

One advocate who has consistently pressed Trump to curb illegal immigration is Mark Krikorian, who leads the far-right think tank Center for Immigration Studies. He acknowledged that while he personally disagrees with Trump's endorsement of Musk's point of view, he understood it as necessary political bargaining.

"You’ve got to understand, even if you’re the most MAGA of MAGA people, these guys helped Trump get elected, and he owes them," Krikorian said. He added, however, that "tech people do not understand the politics of this issue" and that "over Christmas week, they got a lesson."

Gay Henson – the secretary-treasurer of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents tens of thousands of people in the engineering profession — is accusing Trump of flip-flopping on the issue. Henson told Politico he met with Trump in 2020, and that the president told him that "Americans need American jobs first."

"And what’s confusing to me is it sounds like now he’s listening to tech billionaires and tech employers on how the visa program ought to work, and saying the opposite of what he was thinking then," Henson said.

READ MORE: 'Must be removed from the Republican Party': Elon Musk blasts MAGA as 'contemptible fools'

Click here to read Politico's full report.