Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O) and SpaceX, vowed to go to "war" to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers late on Friday amid a dispute between President-elect Donald Trump's longtime supporters and his most recently acquired backers from the tech industry.
"I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend," he added.
Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for green cards.
Musk's tweet was directed at Trump's supporters and immigration hardliners, who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas.
Trump has so far remained silent on the issue. The Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment on Musk's tweets and the H-1B visa debate.
In the past, Trump has expressed a willingness to provide more work visas to skilled workers. He has also promised to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens and severely restrict immigration.
The issue highlights how tech leaders like Musk -- who has taken an important role in the presidential transition, advising on key personnel and policy areas -- are now drawing scrutiny from his base.
The U.S. tech industry relies on the government's H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labor force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.
The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump's selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have influence on the Trump administration's immigration policies.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued "big tech oligarchs" for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Musk has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected president in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions within American tech companies.
