President Donald Trump has said he will “welcome” skilled immigrants to the United States to help “teach” American workers how to develop advanced products such as computer chips and missiles, acknowledging that the move may draw “a little heat” from supporters who favour tighter immigration controls.
Speaking at the US-Saudi Investment Forum on Wednesday, Trump noted that numerous manufacturing facilities — including "extremely complex" plants — are being built across the country and will play a key role in driving economic growth.
Given the sophisticated nature of the products being developed, from telephones and computers to missiles, Trump said companies will need to bring in foreign experts who can train the American workforce.
"And I may take a little heat. I always take a little heat from my people, the people that love me and the people that I love, they happen to be toward the right of centre, sometimes they are way right,” he said at the event, which was also attended by visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump emphasised that companies need skilled workers to “get those plants opened” and that his administration supports them in doing so. “...They're going to have to bring thousands of people with them, and I'm going to welcome those people,” he said, reiterating that these experts would help Americans learn how to make “computer chips and how to make other things.”
He acknowledged that critics of this approach are "really, really smart" and "unbelievable patriots," but argued they fail to recognise the need for American workers to be trained in entirely new skills.
“This is something they've never done, and we're not going to be successful if we don't allow people that invest billions of dollars in plants and equipment to bring a lot of their people from their country to get that plant open, operating and working. I'm sorry,” Trump said, drawing applause.
“So my poll numbers just went down, but with smart people, they've gone way up. They've gone way up. And I mean that.” He added that while he respects his conservative supporters, “I love MAGA, but this is MAGA.”
“So for those of you that are doing the plants, you're going to have all the help you need, and you're going to do a great job, and you're going to teach our people how to do it, and our people are going to be just as good as your people ever were in not such a long period of time,” Trump said.
Many US companies rely on visas such as H-1B and L1 to hire foreign skilled workers for specialised roles. The Trump administration has pursued a tough stance on illegal immigration, and some of the president’s supporters have demanded curbs on H-1B visas, alleging that the programme has been abused at the expense of American workers.
Trump referred to the immigration raid conducted in September at Hyundai’s battery manufacturing plant in Georgia, where hundreds of workers were detained.
Highlighting the complexity of such work, he said, "Batteries are very dangerous to make. They're complex, much more complex than people understand. And they brought in, they spent a billion dollars to build a factory, and they were told to get out. And I said, ‘Stop it. Don't be stupid’. And we worked it out, and now they're teaching our people how to do it.” He added that a large chip factory cannot be run “with people that don't even know what a chip looks like.”
Earlier this month, Trump publicly defended the H-1B programme, arguing that the US needs to tap into global talent because it lacks “certain talents” domestically.
“I agree but you also do have to bring in talent,” Trump had said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
When Ingraham countered that "we have plenty of talent,” Trump replied, “No, you don’t, no you don’t. You don’t have certain talents. And people have to learn. You can't take people off an unemployment line, and say, ‘I'm going to put you into a factory, we're going to make missiles.'”