'Bringing Indians in US as store clerks': Influencer slams MAGA over visa row, says H1-B is for 'degreed individuals with special skills'

Conservative commentator Bill Mitchell again weighed in on the H-1B row inside the MAGA base, taking aim at Republicans who claim the United States is “bringing Indians here as store clerks” on work visas.

Mitchell said the argument is both false and harmful to the MAGA movement, claiming that “a store clerk can’t get an H-1B visa” because the programme is reserved for “degreed individuals with very special skills”.



Mitchell said he was stunned to see MAGA figures attacking Donald Trump over his latest position on H-1B visas. According to him, Trump’s stance today is exactly what he campaigned on in 2024: "Keep the programme but fix the parts that are broken." He accused certain influencers of pushing an extreme line that the entire H1-B system should be eliminated, warning that such a move would be “an absolute disaster” for America’s technology sector.




Mitchell has previously said that the outrage regarding H1-B is mostly confined to X, insisting that ordinary people “don’t even know what the H-1B is”. He questioned the motives of those attacking Trump, asking whether they “just hate all foreigners” and suggesting some of the rhetoric amounts to racism and xenophobia.

If the programme were to end suddenly, he argued, companies would not suddenly hire American workers because many remain “underskilled”. Instead, those jobs would simply be offshored.

The row started when Trump told Fox News earlier this month he wanted to bring “talented people from abroad”. MAGA influencers accused him of implying that America lacked talent, while Democrats called it another Trump reversal. Mitchell now says Trump’s critics twisted his words. Trump had said, “You don’t have certain talents… You can’t take people off the unemployment line and say go make missiles.” Mitchell argued he was talking only about specific technical skills, not the abilities of Americans as a whole.