Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said Sunday that the H-1B visa program would benefit the economy and defend President-elect Trump and Elon Musk's feud with some in their base.
In an interview on ABC News' “This Week,” Lawler said immigration is necessary and supports merit-based visa programs for highly skilled nonimmigrant workers.
“Here is the reality we have to deal with: the population is projected to decline by the end of this century. Over the past 15 years, the birth rate has fallen from 2 children per woman to 1.66 children per woman. The reality is that long-term population decline continues, creating a shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, home health aides, advertising workers, construction workers, and hospitality workers.
“We need immigration. We need a working, legal immigration system. I basically want a system that focuses on our economic needs as a country and, above all, a merit-based immigration system. I believe we need a system. My wife is an immigrant, and I've been through this process with her. It's a fundamentally broken system,” Lawlor said.
“But the H-1B visa program you're talking about, which will issue 65,000 visas plus another 20,000 for master's degree holders, is, in fact, extremely important to our economy. And as President Trump has said, this is a program that he has used in his business for many years, and it's clearly beneficial to our economy,” Lawler continued.
“America was built on immigrants, and immigrants are essential to the continued growth of our economy,” he added.
President Trump expressed support for the visa program in an interview with the New York Post on Saturday, saying: I have always believed in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program. ”
President Trump's support for the program comes as two of his key allies, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will run the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are among those within the Republican Party, including on the far right. The move comes as Musk's social platform X faces intense scrutiny from some quarters. activist Laura Loomer and other hardline anti-immigrant Republicans;
The controversy further escalated late Friday night after Musk promised to “go to war” over the issue.postWith X.
“H1B is the reason I'm in America, along with so many critical people who created SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong,” he wrote in the post. .
Asked about Trump ally Steve Bannon calling Trump a “toddler” and calling the show a scam, Lawler said: “I don't talk about conspiracy theories, so… You'll have to ask Steve Bannon and others.”
“But look, here are the facts,” he continued. “There's no question that we want an America where Americans are employed and where our workforce needs are met. That means we need to revamp our education system, our K-12 education system. That’s it.”
“We need technical schools. We need to put our children on early STEM trajectories so that they can become the engineers of tomorrow. But the reality is that India has far more engineers than our country. So this is both a function of fixing the education system and a function of making the legal immigration system work.”
