Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

A bitter public feud split the MAGA movement over the holidays, as supporters of high-skilled legal immigration like Elon Musk argued vociferously (and sometimes profanely) with the right’s immigration critics over the topic of H-1B visas.

Musk, like many tech executives, strongly supports that program, which lets companies bring skilled foreign workers to the US for specific jobs — indeed, Musk said he once had such a visa himself. Critics on the right have long argued that it suppresses wages for American workers, while proponents say it attracts top talent and helps American businesses succeed.

“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face,” Musk posted on X. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

That particular missive was aimed at an X poster with a small following. And yet Musk’s real nemesis on the issue is someone with far more power, influence, and bureaucratic savvy: Stephen Miller.

Miller is the hardline anti-immigration ideologue who effectively oversaw immigration policy for the first Trump administration as a senior White House aide. He spent Trump’s first term mastering the workings of the federal bureaucracy and was one of only a few high-level appointees to remain in the boss’s good graces. In Trump’s second term, he’ll have another high-level role, as deputy White House chief of policy.

As I wrote in a September profile, Miller is the architect of Trump’s mass deportation agenda — but he’s also pushed hard to restrict legal immigration including H-1B visas specifically, despite his boss’s sometimes contradictory impulses on the issue. In Trump’s first term, Miller was tenacious enough that he eventually got his way: The administration cited the pandemic to “temporarily” suspend all H-1B visas while crafting rules designed to drastically limit the program.

So while Musk might be encouraged by the broadly positive comments on H-1B visas Trump made to a reporter on Saturday — the president-elect said he’s “been a believer in H-1B” — the real question is: Can Musk win a policy war with Miller?

The GOP coalition has long been split on high-skilled immigration. The party’s pro-business faction has supported it, arguing it brings in the best talent and helps American companies succeed and compete globally. But the nativist or populist right opposes it as a plot by cosmopolitan elites to avoid paying American workers. Trump has straddled this divide, often praising H1-B visas, while appointees like Miller worked to limit them. (“Big Tech is replacing Americans,” Miller tweeted last year.)

The divide took on a new dynamic over the summer, when several wealthy tech figures — such as Musk and David Sacks — endorsed Trump. Appearing on All-In, a podcast hosted by Sacks and other venture capitalists, Trump was pressed to promise to expand high-skilled immigration. “I do promise,” Trump said. He also mused (without being asked) that international students graduating from US colleges should “automatically” get a green card to stay and work. (Afterward, his campaign walked this back, saying that only after “aggressive vetting” would “the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions” be allowed to stay.)

After the election, Trump named Musk and former biotech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will seemingly be some sort of outside advisory body issuing recommendations on how the administration should cut regulations and spending. Trump also named Sacks the “A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

The current brouhaha was kicked off by far-right activist and provocateur Laura Loomer last week, after Trump announced that another venture capitalist, Sriram Krishnan, would join the White House to work on AI policy. Loomer called the appointment “deeply disturbing.” She pointed to a November X post in which Krishnan wrote that “anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration would be huge,” saying this “is not America First policy.”

From there, the conflict spiraled:

Eventually, Ramaswamy joined the fray in a lengthy X post, arguing that the reason “top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans” is that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” He condemned the idea of valuing “the jock over the valedictorian” and criticized American cultural products like the TV shows Boy Meets World and Friends — praising instead the 2014 film Whiplash, which portrayed an instructor’s psychological abuse of a jazz drummer aspiring to artistic greatness (directed by Ramaswamy’s Harvard University classmate).

As for Miller, he has not weighed in explicitly. But later on the day of Ramaswamy’s post, Miller posted on X, without explanation, excerpts from a 2020 speech when Trump praised the culture and achievements of the American people, calling them “the most adventurous and confident people ever to walk the face of the Earth.”

Some on the nativist right, like Bannon, interpreted Miller’s post as a rebuttal to Ramaswamy — and a reminder of who will really hold power in the White House. Miller, who oversaw the White House speechwriting office, may have had a hand in crafting Trump’s words there — just as he will have a major role in crafting immigration policy in 2025 and likely beyond.

Now, if you believe what Trump says currently, he’s pro H-1B. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told the New York Post on Saturday. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he continued. (However, the New York Times reported Trump “appears to have only sparingly used” the H-1B — but that his companies had often used the very different H-2 visas for “jobs like cooks, housekeepers, and waiters.”)

But Trump has previously spoken more negatively about the program. “We should end it,” he said in 2016, calling it “very bad for workers.” (“The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: These are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay,” he said in a campaign statement that March.)

And the biggest problem for Musk and his tech allies is that, if they want H-1B expansion, they’d have to go through Miller, a formidable opponent.

Trump has sent mixed signals on legal immigration, but Miller has made his agenda clear: He wants much less of it. In 2020, when Trump announced “temporary” suspensions on legal immigration during the pandemic, Miller privately told allies this was just the first step in a broader strategy: “The most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor.”

And in contrast to ideological allies like Bannon and Miller’s one-time boss Jeff Sessions, who flamed out of government and lost Trump’s favor, Miller has lasted, becoming a seemingly permanent fixture in Trumpworld — being dubbed “the president of immigration.”

He exerted such vast policy influence in Trump’s first term in part due to his focus on bureaucratic minutia, in part because he could get other appointees fired, in part because he helped craft Trump’s words in prepared speeches, and in part because he was unshakably loyal to the boss and savvy at making alliances with other top officials. But mostly it was because other staffers believed, with good reason, that he and Trump had a mind meld on immigration — that he was speaking for the boss.

So the venture capitalists and tech executives who have more recently joined Trump’s coalition and hope to be rewarded with their preferred H-1B policy changes will face a challenge getting past Miller. Trump may say things, but it’s Miller who turns those things into policy, and who knows how to slow-walk or squelch proposals he dislikes. So long as Miller holds Trump’s favor, and so long as he remains effectively in charge of immigration policy, betting on restrictionism is the only reasonable bet.

Finally, there’s yet another twist to this messy saga — shortly before this dispute began last week, Trump announced he’d chosen a new appointee to join Musk and Ramaswamy at DOGE.

Her name? Katie Miller — Stephen’s wife. “Congratulations to Stephen and Katie!” Trump posted.