In the 1968 Cold War thriller Ice Station Zebra, Patrick McGoohan’s British spy character explains to the American submarine captain played by Rock Hudson, “The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists.” Substitute “Indian programmers” for “German scientists” and you get a sense of how the tech industry tries to frame the immigration issue.
Newly minted tech-industry supporters of Donald Trump have been vocal in calling for increases in immigration as indispensable to American economic and geopolitical success. Elon Musk wrote, “I am very much PRO increasing legal immigration significantly.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman wrote that “We could open the floodgates for entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, makers, designers and more,” actually citing the German scientists who came to the United States.
But these men, fleeing to the MAGA camp because of the Democrats’ policies, are now part of a coalition the vast majority of whose members are very much not interested in opening the floodgates.
A 2023 poll by Gallup found that 73 percent of Republicans wanted immigration decreased. That ongoing poll doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal, but according to a Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey in September 2022, two-thirds of Republicans who expressed a favorable view of Donald Trump specifically wanted legal immigration reduced.
As he has made clear repeatedly, Trump is not a restrictionist when it comes to legal immigration—but his voters certainly are. This sets up a potential conflict between the incoming president’s new tech industry friends and his base. Politico framed it this way in a recent headline: “Elon Musk vs. Stephen Miller: Washington preps for battle on high-tech immigration.”
It will come as no surprise that I’m on the Stephen Miller side of this dispute. But I don’t want to litigate here the pros and cons of “skilled” immigration. Instead, I want to make the case that this tension need not be fatal—there are ways to address some of the concerns of the tech titans without increasing, or even while decreasing, overall legal immigration.
Let me outline two win-win changes, one administrative, one legislative.
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