Elon and Vivek make an Oopsie with H1B visas

Good day all. I missed this when it first broke so I’m playing a bit of catch up. Apparently, Elon and Vivek announced that we need to bring in more H1B visa holders. This set off a bit of a firestorm and for obvious reasons.

For a bit of background, the H1B visa was originally, and technically still is, meant to allow highly skilled foreign workers to temporarily come into the United States for a specific job. What has actually happened is that many corporations have used the H1B Visa program to replace American tech workers with lower payed foreign tech workers.

One of the most egregious cases was Disney under Michael Eisner. They replace most of their American IT employees with H1B visa holders. What made things even worse was that in order to get a severance package, they had to train their replacements.

Needless to say, Americans, once they know about the H1B visa program and how it’s abused, get rather angry. Here are the details from Fox News:

Trump world warriors Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have ignited an intra-MAGA battle with their proposals to increase immigration visas for high-skill workers.

Musk and Ramaswamy, who have been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), argued that American culture has not prioritized education enough, and therefore foreign workers are needed for tech companies like Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla.

Both Musk and Ramaswamy are big players in highly technical businesses. However, they have completely missed the point. It’s not so much education, all though there are major issues with the American educational system, (Most of which can be laid at the feet of the Unions and Professional Educators), but the problem that people studying for positions in the Information Technology world, development, infrastructure, networking, etc, is they they expect to be paid what they’re worth.

As business owners, getting costs down is a major project. If a business can bring in someone on an H1B visa, that person is going to be lower paid and won’t be able to try and find a new, better paying job. Basically, they are paid slaves. If an H1B holder asks for a raise, better working conditions or might not want to do something for ethical reasons, they will be fired and deported. An American worker, or someone who is a permanent Legal Resident Alien, can tell an employer who mistreats or underpays them to take the job and shove it.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk wrote on X, arguing that the tech industry needs to “double” the number of engineers working in the U.S. today. 

“The number of people who are super-talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” he added. 

Musk likened recruiting foreign workers to assembling a sports team. “You need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

Ok, then what we need to do is “Import” those who want to become legal Resident Aliens and, hopefully, American citizens. What you and pretty much all of the Corporations have been doing is going the H1B route. These are not meant to be permanent workers, but temporary workers for a specific project with very specific knowledge. What has been coming in, mostly, have been low paid, mediocre H1B’s from India.

Now there are some who come in who are very good. I’ve worked with some in my various real world jobs. However, I’ve also worked with a lot of duds who didn’t know much of anything. A classic case is the Boeing 737 MAX avionics developers. They were an India based company that had never done an avionics package. The upshot? There are a lot of calls to just permanently ground the 7337 MAX as to dangerous to fly. The original Boeing developers? Laid off to save money. So Elon, tell me again how we have a shortage of Americans.

Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India, backed up Musk and took shots at American society. 

“American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” he wrote on X. 

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad [sic] champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

These two, who, lets be honest, are brilliant people, really put their wedding tackle into a meat grinder, and people let them know it.

Those comments didn’t sit well with conservative crusaders like pundit Ann Coulter, commentator Laura Loomer, former Rep. Matt Gaetz and even former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” Haley wrote in a post on the social platform X. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

One problem with Haley is she has totally marginalized herself and no one is listening to her. She also doesn’t like Vivek Ramaswamy very much. Then we have Laura Loomer who managed to blast the two and managed to make her criticism look rather racist.

Right-wing rabble-rouser Loomer said, “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third-world invaders from India. It’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas. Not an extension.”

I once liked Loomer. Then she went insane and I don’t pay all that much attention to her these days. She could have said something entirely different and yet convey the same idea without sounding like an idiot.

The skirmish kicked up after Trump nominated venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to serve as his AI policy adviser. That nomination triggered anti-Indian backlash, and critics highlighted his past support for lifting the cap on green cards. 

I do not know anything about Sriram Krishnan so I looked him up. Looks like he came to the United States legally and then did what we all want everyone to do. Make good. Regarding lifting the cap on green cards, that is something that can be looked in to of course, but honestly, we need to do a complete overhaul of the immigration system, literally from the ground up.

There were others on the left who saw this as a way to split Musk and Ramaswamy from President Trump. Of course, the reason for that is simple. Muck and Ramaswamy, when they concentrate on their brief, are going to find trillions of dollars in waste and duplication and probably find a number of programs, agencies and departments that can be closed down. They are seeing this as their way to stop DOGE before it really gets started.

It’s not going to happen. People are not saying that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy need to be shown the door. They are saying that they are wrong, they’ve made a big mistake and are, like myself, explaining the error they’ve made. We aren’t going to throw them out. Vivek may be currently dining on sole of shoe right now, but he’s fairly young and he will learn.

Now, as for the H1B visa program? I think it needs to be shut down. It’s been abused for far to long. We need to completely overhaul the current immigration system and we need to round up and deport the millions of illegal aliens that have invaded the United States. If someone from another nation is so valuable to the United States, and he or she wants to come here, then they should immigrate and get a green card as a resident legal alien. Then they will get the money they’re worth and if they are mistreated, they can walk to another company and not have to worry about being deported. That’s they way to do things.

Thatisall

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