Republicans may not know it yet, but they’re in the process of handing Steve Bannon a powerful weapon to wield in his war with Elon Musk over visas granted to high-skilled immigrants. This could further divide the MAGA coalition over immigration—and badly inconvenience Musk, who is trying to protect those visas from a ferocious assault being waged by Bannon and his allies.
The weapon in question, it turns out, is buried in the Laken Riley Act, the controversial bill that would mandate the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of minor nonviolent crimes. Another provision in the bill—which the Senate advanced in a key procedural vote Friday with Trump’s tacit blessing, putting it on track to become law—would authorize state attorneys general to bring lawsuits to force presidential administrations to deny visas to any particular country that isn’t accepting deportees. That provision has attracted public criticism, but Republicans have been unmoved.
What observers haven’t noticed, however, is that this measure is directly relevant to the Bannon-Musk battle. Bannon can now enlist a right-wing state attorney general—like Ken Paxton of Texas—to bring a lawsuit designed to halt visas to, say, people from India, which supplies many high-skilled tech workers. Under the law, it’ll be perfectly plausible that a handpicked judge could stop the issuance of such visas.
“We’re definitely going to use it, and we’re going to get after attorneys general,” Bannon told me when I contacted him to ask whether he sees the law as useful to him.
Bannon stressed that he fully supports Trump, and that he expects Trump to use all his power on his own to deny visas to countries that don’t accept deportees. But Bannon confirmed that he will seize on the law if Trump’s State Department fails to deny visas. “We certainly will call for state A.G.s to do this,” Bannon said.
Musk and many tech executives adamantly support H-1B skilled-worker visas, arguing that they supply tech talent to fill a real shortage of U.S. expertise. Bannon and his camp strongly oppose H-1B visas, claiming that “globalists” like Musk actively seek to give these jobs to foreigners even though Americans absolutely could fill them.
The opposition’s cause has also attracted racists and “great replacement theory” fanatics, who describe H-1B visas as a Trojan horse for “third-world invaders.” As Vox’s Andrew Prokop details, this issue is fertile soil for those who like to believe America’s supposed white European identity is under siege, not least because high percentages of recent H-1B recipients come from India.
Trump recently sided with Musk in this battle. But when the Laken Riley Act becomes law—which looks inevitable after the Senate voted to end debate on it Friday, with 10 Democrats in support—Trump can’t necessarily control what happens next.
The reason is that the bill grants broad authority to state attorneys general to bring lawsuits against an administration—to force it into compliance with immigration laws—under various circumstances, provided their state can show that federal enforcement fail
