New York/Washington

President Donald Trump said he will “welcome” to the US skilled immigrants who will “teach” American workers to develop complex products like chips and missiles, noting he may take a “little heat” over this from his base which supports immigration restrictions.

Addressing the US-Saudi Investment Forum on Wednesday, Trump said that a large number of plants, including "extremely complex” ones, are being built in the US that will contribute significantly to the country’s economic growth.

He added that, given the complex nature of products that will be manufactured in these plants, like telephones, computers, and missiles, companies will have to bring in skilled workers from abroad who can share their knowledge and teach American workers.

"And I may take a little heat. I always take a little heat from my people, the people that love me and the people that I love, they happen to be toward the right of centre, sometimes they are way right,” Trump said at the event that was attended by visiting Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman.

The US President said that companies have to bring people to "get those plants opened, we want you to do that, and we want those people to teach our people how to make computer chips and how to make other things."

"...They're going to have to bring thousands of people with them, and I'm going to welcome those people,” he said.

Trump said that the people against this are "really, really smart" and "unbelievable patriots", but he said they don't understand that the American people have to be taught.

"This is something they've never done, and we're not going to be successful if we don't allow people that invest billions of dollars in plants and equipment to bring a lot of their people from their country to get that plant open, operating and working. I'm sorry,” Trump said amid applause from the audience. 

“So my poll numbers just went down, but with smart people, they've gone way up. They've gone way up. And I mean that.”

Trump added said that he loves his conservative friends, “I love MAGA, but this is MAGA,” referring to his political ideology of ‘Make America Great Again’.

“So for those of you that are doing the plants, you're going to have all the help you need, and you're going to do a great job, and you're going to teach our people how to do it, and our people are going to be just as good as your people ever were in not such a long period of time,” Trump said.

Companies use visas such as H-1B and L1 to hire skilled foreign workers for speciality occupations in the US.

The Trump administration has launched an intense crackdown on illegal immigration, and the President’s supporters have also called for cracking down on H-1B visas, citing widespread abuse and fraud in the programme amid allegations that H-1B visa holders are rendering Americans unemployed.

Trump cited the example of the Hyundai battery manufacturing plant in Georgia, where law enforcement officials had conducted an immigration raid in September and detained hundreds of workers.

Referring to the incident, Trump said, "Batteries are very dangerous to make. They're complex, much more complex than people understand. And they brought in, they spent a billion dollars to build a factory, and they were told to get out. And I said, ‘Stop it. Don't be stupid’. And we worked it out, and now they're teaching our people how to do it.”

He said that a company cannot open up a big computer chip plant “with people that don't even know what a chip looks like.” 

Earlier this month, Trump had defended the H-1B visa programme, saying America has to bring in talent from around the world as it does not have “certain talents” in the country.

“I agree but you also do have to bring in talent,” Trump had said in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.

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When Ingraham noted that "we have plenty of talent”, Trump had said, “No, you don’t, no you don’t. 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, we're going to make missiles,'” Trump had said.