Steve Bannon Escalates MAGA Civil War With Call for ‘Reparations’ Over H-1B Visas

Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported.

Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.”

H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program.

But they have become a lightning rod for the anti-immigration wing of MAGA, who claim they allow employers, especially tech companies, to import cheap labor wholesale and undercut American workers. Bannon this weekend used the issue to attack both Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who until now had been MAGA heroes for their “department of government efficiency.” Musk attempted to calm the war on Sunday, saying the program should be reformed.

But far from taking a laurel branch from the world’s richest man, Bannon stepped up his rhetoric on Monday’s show and argued that all H1-B immigrants should be expelled as part of Trump’s mass deportation plans.

“The workers that are here on H-1B visas should be deported at the same time we’re deporting the 15 million illegal aliens Biden brought across the border to suppress wages to low-income workers,” Bannon said. “American workers should be hired immediately to fill those gaps, and then we should start the discussions on reparations, on what they knowingly did to American tech workers.”

Reparations for descendants of those forced into slavery have been frequently discussed in recent years in the U.S.–and opposed by Republicans particularly–but calls for ‘reparations’ for U.S. citizens who have allegedly lost out to legal immigrants are new.

Bannon and Loomer aimed much of their fire at Musk, a prominent Trump backer during the campaign who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to boost his reelection. Musk strongly backed the visas last week after Loomer criticized an incoming Trump appointee, launching a tit-for-tat with conservatives over the issue and telling one to “f--- yourself” over their opposition. Loomer, who Musk said was “trolling for attention,” claimed she was suspended from X for 12 hours and her account was demonetized over her stance on the issue and criticism of Musk.

“Why is [Musk] afraid of Laura Loomer?” Bannon asked on Monday.

“I think that a lot of people have a hard time speaking truth to power and are afraid of taking on billionaires,” Loomer said. She claimed that Trump’s advisers are hesitant to criticize Musk because they’re “dependent” on monetization checks from the platform.

“They realize that their input to President Trump is being overshadowed by the richest man in the world who has these ulterior motives,” Loomer said. “Does he really support MAGA and the America First agenda or is he trying to push this neo-reactionary political movement so we can establish a monarchy and have multi-polarity?”

Bannon had previously hailed Musk for supporting Trump throughout the 2024 election and said on Monday he wasn’t singling him out, but he said that wealthy types like Musk and David Sacks “are just coming to the party.”

“They’ve got their own set of beliefs and their own set of economics,” Bannon said. “That’s not MAGA economics, that’s not America First economics, and it’s certainly not American systems first.”