President-elect Donald Trump claimed this week that he has not changed his mind on the controversial H-1B visa program and that the US needs “smart people” into the country amid a heated intra-Republican debate over the visa program.

“I haven’t changed my mind. “I’ve always felt that we have to have the most competent people in our country, and we need competent people,” Trump said Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago. “We need smart people to come to our country. We need a lot of people to come to our country. We’re going to have jobs like we’ve never had before.”“

The H-1B visa program allows US companies to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs and is predominantly used by the technology industry. But it has long been controversial among some conservatives because it has been abused by tech companies to attract cheap, mostly Indian labor to replace American workers.

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The show hit the headlines last week when Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Government Efficiency, made the case for the importance of foreign workers for tech companies.

“The reason I am in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that have made America strong is because of H1B,” Musk said on X.

That reignited a divide between rights over the program and questions about whether it is being used to attract the best talent or whether it is being used by companies to recruit cheaper workers who are tied to their jobs by the visa.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said on Fox News Sunday that H1-B visas are being “abused.”

“I think the abuses of the H-1B program are obvious, where you have, so to speak, the sons and daughters of these factory workers who have lost their jobs, taken white-collar jobs as accountants and are, you know, training them,” replacement workers, the foreign workers undercutting their wages,” he said.

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Trump has previously expressed skepticism about the H-1B visa program. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he pledged to combat abuse of the program, citing allegations that companies were forcing Americans to train their cheaper substitutes.

“The H-1B program is neither about high-skills nor about immigration: these are temporary foreign workers imported from abroad for the express purpose of replacing lower-wage American workers. “I remain committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that took place at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign successors,” he said in 2016 .

“I will forever end the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first in every visa and immigration program. No exceptions,” he said.

He also said his companies use the H-1B program “and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it.”

His administration immediately began considering reforms to the H-1B visa program, proposing a sweeping rule in 2020 that would prioritize selecting higher-salary applicants for the roughly 85,000 visas allotted annually.

This rule would have required registrants at the highest of four pay levels to be allowed to apply for visa assignment first. Once those at the highest level have applied, the process moves to Level III and so on until the places are filled.

“Simply put: Because demand for H-1B visas has exceeded annual supply for more than a decade, DHS prefers that capped H-1B visas go to beneficiaries who are qualified relative to their (standard occupational classification) Code and their region earn the highest salary (s) of the intended employment,” the rule states.

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The rule was not enacted because the Biden administration abandoned it and has since proposed its own rule. However, it was received positively by immigration activists. Other rules proposed during the Trump administration sought to narrow the definition of “specialty occupation” and make changes to the way the “prevailing wage” is determined to ensure it does not fall below U.S. wages.

The new Trump administration has not said specifically what it will do about H-1B and whether it will resume its efforts from the first term. However, Musk proposed “significantly raising the minimum salary and adding annual costs for maintaining the H1B, making it significantly more expensive to hire employees abroad than domestically.”

“I have made it very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform,” he said Saturday.

At the same time, Trump told the New York Post that the show was “great.”

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“I always liked the visas, I was always in favor of them. That’s why we have them,” Trump said.

“I have many H-1B visas for my properties. I believed in H-1B. I used it often. It’s a great program.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.