President Donald Trump has been walking a fine line when it comes to H-1B visas — the visa that high-skill foreign professionals apply for to work in the US. These visas often go to physicians, software developers, engineers, university professors, and other specialty professions.

Earlier this year Trump proposed a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, a move that aimed to restrict the flow of legal immigrant workers into the US. But in a recent interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, the president defended the program and said H-1B visas were necessary “to bring in talent.”

“We have plenty of talented people here,” Ingraham replied.

“No you don’t, no you don’t,” Trump said.

His comments have sparked outrage among his MAGA base.

“Trump needs to get out of his bubble and back on the ground listening to the American people who elected him to work for us,” Savanah Hernandez, a MAGA influencer and contributor to conservative youth group Turning Point USA said online. “His H-1B comment shows how out of touch with the base he has become.”

The debate over high-skill work visas inside this very anti-immigration White House gets at a fundamental tension. Trump may have been elected on an “America First” platform, but as his comments to Ingraham suggest, the reality of the American economy may turn out to be more complicated.

And some in the tech industry say that this debate over the H-1B visas is missing the larger point. Today, Explained’s Astead Herndon spoke with tech CEO Vivek Wadhwa to get an inside perspective. Wadhwa runs a medical diagnostics company here in the US. He thinks the visa system is broken — but that by making it harder for the world’s highly skilled workers to come here, America will only harm itself.

“I came here as an immigrant. I came here as a skilled worker. My father was a diplomat, so I came on a diplomatic visa. And when I came here in 1980, it took 18 months for me to get a green card,” Wadhwa tells Herndon. “Five years later, I was a US citizen. I became part of the American success story.”

When he became an academic, he

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