President Donald Trump has appeared to change his tune on the stringency on one of his immigration policies, speaking about the importance of H-1B visas for specialized labor only a couple months after imposing steep hurdles meant to reduce the number of those visas doled out by U.S. companies.
“You don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn,” he said. “You can’t just say a country is coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant and take people off an unemployment line who haven’t worked in five years and they’re going to start making their missiles. It doesn’t work that way.”
At the time Trump signed the proclamation implementing the H-1B visa fee, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick argued doling out as many visas—which require a bachelor’s degree and have usually been distributed via lottery—would not be economically efficient for the U.S.
“If you’re going to train people, you’re going to train Americans.” Lutnick told reporters. “If you have a very sophisticated engineer and you want to bring them in…then you can pay $100,000 a year for your H-1B visa.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“You know, making batteries is very complicated. It’s not an easy thing. Very dangerous, a lot of explosions, a lot of problems,” Trump said. “They had like 500 or 600 people, early stages, to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Well, they wanted them to get out of the country. You’re going to need that, Laura.”
