Trump Struggles to Sell MAGA on H-1Bs

White House messaging is a mess, and the upside of immigration is getting lost in all the noise.

It has become unfashionable on the political right to say nice things about foreign nationals, even the ones who are here lawfully. Just ask Donald Trump, who has struggled to convince the MAGA base that legal immigration is a net benefit to America. Welcome to my world, Mr. President.

President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Sept. 19.

Part of the problem has been White House inconsistency on the issue. Mr. Trump’s position on illegal immigration isn’t in doubt, but he can seem indecisive, even self-contradictory, when discussing migration policies for those who play by the rules. Last year, for example, he sided with Elon Musk, a staunch proponent of the H-1B work visa program typically used by foreign professionals in fields such as engineering, technology and medicine.

Mr. Musk said he would “go to war” to defend migration for skilled workers. “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” he wrote in a social-media post in December. Mr. Trump soon after told the New York Post that he too has “always been in favor” of the program. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.” Multiple news outlets have reported that a Trump company appeared to have hired an H-1B worker as recently as 2022.

Nevertheless, the White House announced in September that it was attaching a $100,000 fee to new petitions for H-1B visas to discourage U.S. companies from hiring skilled immigrants. The system “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” the executive order read. Abuses “of the H-1B program present a national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields.”

Was the White House suggesting that the hiring practices of the president’s own businesses undercut the wages and employment opportunities of U.S. workers and threaten our national security? It’s hard to tell. What we do know is that since signing the order, Mr. Trump has made several statements in support of immigrant labor. In October, he told reporters that he was “very much opposed” to the decision by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to raid a Hyundai car battery plant in Georgia. These “batteries are very complex and they’re actually very dangerous to make,” he said. “You can’t just pick people off an unemployment line” for that kind of work.

In an interview earlier this month with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Mr. Trump once again explained that U.S. workers aren’t interchangeable widgets. When Ms. Ingraham said that high-skill immigration was unnecessary because “we have plenty of talented people here” already, the president replied: “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 where we’re going to make missiles.’ ”

It would help if the administration’s message were more consistent, but the debate is nevertheless worthwhile. Vice President JD Vance and senior White House officials such as Stephen Miller are telling the MAGA base what it wants to hear, which is that America today has no use for immigration, be it legal or illegal, high-skilled or low-skilled. Mr. Trump, by contrast, is urging a more pragmatic approach based on certain economic realities. Moreover, the president is telling the truth. Far from threatening our prosperity, legal immigration enhances it.

Migrants have helped to enrich our living standards and helped ward off depopulation trends that threaten other wealthy countries. A labor force that is aging and shrinking is less productive, and less productive countries are poorer. Fewer people can translate into less capital investment and lower demand for goods and services. Without enough young workers to replace retirees, pension costs and entitlement programs become unsustainable.

Global fertility rates have been in steady decline since the 1960s, and the trend has quickened in recent years. The United Nations Population Division reports that as of 2022 every major population in East Asia—China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan—was shrinking. For the past half-century Europe’s overall fertility rates have been at sub-replacement levels. Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine last year, the economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt noted that in the U.S. “the demographic fundamentals look fairly sound—at least when compared with the competition.” What makes us the main outlier among developed nations is our ability to attract foreigners.

“Thanks in large measure to immigration, the United States is on track to account for a growing share of the rich world’s labor force, youth and highly educated talent,” Mr. Eberstadt explained. “Continuing inflows of skilled immigrants also give the country a great advantage. No other population on the planet is better placed to translate population potential into national power.”