SAN FRANCISCO — Esther Crawford, a former director of product management who was a key figure in Twitter’s transition to X following its acquisition by Elon Musk, has strongly criticized the new $100,000 fee imposed by President Donald Trump on H-1B work visas.
In a post on X, Crawford pushed back against the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, arguing that the social media platform would not have survived without the contributions of engineers from India and China who work in the US on H-1B visas.
“When posting anti-immigrant takes, remember: they’re the reason you can tweet at all,” Crawford wrote. She highlighted that these engineers “stayed after the acquisition, worked long hours and solved brutally complex problems alongside American colleagues.”
The H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations, is heavily utilized by Indian and Chinese tech workers. Indians make up more than 70% of the approximately 400,000 H-1B visa holders, with Chinese workers accounting for around 12%.
Elon Musk’s Stance
While Elon Musk has not yet commented on the new visa fee, Crawford’s comments shed light on the vital role foreign talent plays in the tech industry, a point Musk has acknowledged in the past.
Despite a tumultuous relationship with President Donald Trump, Musk has broadly supported the H-1B visa program. However, he has also previously argued that the system is “broken” and called for it to be made more expensive. This stance is aligned with Trump’s rationale that the program has been misused and should be reserved for only the “truly high-skilled workers.”
The new $100,000 fee, announced as a Friday proclamation, has sent shockwaves through the tech community and among potential applicants, with many viewing it as a prohibitive measure that could severely limit the flow of skilled talent into the US.