Trump defends H-1B visas: "You don't have certain talents" in the U.S.
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President Trump at the White House on Monday. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday evening H-1B skilled worker visas are necessary because "you don't have certain talents" in the U.S.
Why it matters: H-1B visas have divided MAGA world, with business leaders like Elon Musk saying they're vital to U.S. tech dominance, but Fox News' Laura Ingraham raised with Trump the concern that the scheme risks displacing American employees with foreign workers.
- Trump signed an executive order in September requiring highly skilled workers hoping to obtain an H-1B visa to work in the U.S. to pay a $100,000 fee.
Driving the news: Trump said on "The Ingraham Angle" that the U.S. is "leading China by a lot on AI" and "we have potentially the greatest economy — already it is. ... there is never going to be a country like what we have right now."
- Ingraham asked Trump if that meant "the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority" for his administration.
- "If you want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood the country with with tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of foreign workers," she said.
Zoom in: "I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent," Trump said.
- Ingraham countered: "We have plenty of talented people" in the U.S.
- "No, you don't, no you don't … you don't have certain talents, and people have to learn," Trump said.
Of note: Trump noted that ICE raided a Hyundai manufacturing campus in Georgia in September and arrested hundreds of South Korean workers who were building a battery plant.
- He said they "raided" the facility "because they wanted illegal immigrants out," but these workers had "made batteries all their life."
- Making batteries is a "very complicated" process, Trump said. "It's not an easy thing and very dangerous — a lot of explosions, a lot of problems.
- "They had like 500 or 600 people, early stages to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Well, they wanted them to get out of the country. You're going to need that," he added.
- "You can't just say a country is coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant and take people off an unemployment line who haven't worked in five years and they're going to start making their missiles. It doesn't work that way."
Go deeper: What to know about the H-1B visas fueling divide in MAGA world
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Fox interview aired on Tuesday, not Sunday.
