WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Elon Musk,

the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, vowed to go to

"war" to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers

late on Friday amid a dispute between President-elect Donald

Trump's longtime supporters and his most recently acquired

backers from the tech industry.

In a post on social media platform X, Musk said "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."

"I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you

cannot possibly comprehend," he added.

Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa,

has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla

obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically

for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply

for green cards.

Musk's tweet was directed at Trump's supporters and

immigration hardliners, who have increasingly pushed for the

H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over

immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign

workers brought into the country on work visas.

Trump has so far remained silent on the issue. The Trump

transition did not respond to a request for comment on Musk's

tweets and the H-1B visa debate.

In the past, Trump has expressed a willingness to provide

more work visas to skilled workers. He has also promised to

deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy

tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens and

severely restrict immigration.

The issue highlights how tech leaders like Musk -- who has

taken an important role in the presidential transition, advising

on key personnel and policy areas -- are now drawing scrutiny

from his base.

The U.S. tech industry relies on the government's H-1B visa

program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its

companies, a labor force that critics say undercuts wages for

American citizens.

The altercation was set off earlier this week by

far-right activists who criticized Trump's selection of Sriram

Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an

adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have

influence on the Trump administration's immigration policies.

On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante,

critiqued "big tech oligarchs" for supporting the H-1B program

and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.

In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a

line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal

immigration.

Musk has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars

helping Trump get elected president in November. He has posted

regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill

all the needed positions within American tech companies.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington)