Every 15 minutes, Americans are given a new reason why we need to import legions of foreigners.
We are told that without illegal aliens, our fruit will rot on the vine (I shudder at the thought of the great fruit shortage that plagued America before mass immigration), tableside guacamole will cost more than Wagyu, our lawns will turn into jungles as landscaping disappears, and, most recently, without an army of H-1B visa imports, our STEM fields will fossilize, leaving America mired in a comparatively dark of age of tech as our adversaries run laps around us. Regardless of the latest justification, one thing remains constant: You’re a bad person (and probably a racist) if you ask whether there’s an ulterior motive.
If you managed to disconnect from politics and social media over Christmas, good for you, but for those who couldn’t pry themselves away, they witnessed a heated debate on X over H-1B visas. As the discussion unfolded, a myth was dispelled: H-1B visas are limited to supremely technical fields that require genius-level IQ. It turns out, H-1B applicants include wannabe 7-Eleven clerks, priests, plumbers, and architect interns, to name a handful.
Others correctly pointed out that we cannot measure a supposed domestic labor shortage in tech without controlling for racial discrimination in the admissions processes at tech feeder universities and discriminatory hiring practices in Silicon Valley that disadvantage outspoken conservatives and white applicants. Cheap labor and strict control over employees were presented as obvious incentives for companies leveraging H-1B workers.
Those with a vested interest in the current system scrambled to defend the program as the general narrative for mass migration went from “just doing jobs Americans won’t do” to “Americans are the equivalent of lobotomized torsos who lack the mental and physical capability to do literally any job.”
There’s a spectrum of beliefs on the issue, but if you distill the discussion to its core, almost everyone falls into one of two groups: 1) Chamber of Commerce, growth-at-all-costs types who see America as a “sports team” or 2) those who see America as a people with a specific culture.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is firmly on the sports team … team. On its face, the sports analogy seems benign, but America is not a basketball franchise. Sports teams are small, controlled environments with a narrow focus on a common goal. Fundamentally, everyone on the team wants the exact same thing. Because of this, the side effects of diversity in small team environments can be mitigated. But even these environments don’t escape the reality that comradery is always positively correlated with shared values.
To apply the sports team approach to America is to assume that hundreds of millions of people will always have the same goal, despite the rapidly declining cultural overlap that comes with endless immigration. The false claim that suggests people of all cultures desire the same thing is always premised on a farcical and ridiculously broad concept such as, “We all want America to succeed.” The problem is, depending on who you ask, “America succeeding” might mean communism or the murder of CEOs.
There were early signs that Musk’s views on immigration would clash with conservatives. In September 2023, Musk posted on X: “Illegal immigration needs to stop, but I’m super in favor of greatly expanding and simplifying legal immigration. Anyone who proves themselves to be hard-working, talented and honest should be allowed to come to America. Period.”
According to Musk, America should open its arms to everyone who is “hard-working, talented, and honest.” This isn’t practical or even desirable. Hard-working and talented are vague and subjective concepts, and we cannot measure the honesty of potential immigrants. If you asked 100 people to give you a percentage of the world’s population that is hard-working and talented, the responses would range from less than 1 percent to 100 percent. Sure, we should try to identify talent, but that’s quite different than saying every so-called hard-working and talented person “should be allowed to come to America. Period.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
In an X post with more than 100 million views, Vivek Ramaswamy claimed Americans have lost their competitive edge, and that’s why tech companies hire foreigners over native-born Americans. There is much to criticize in today’s culture, but Ramaswamy’s post fell short.
In a ham-fisted attempt to place blame, he shoehorned in cultural references where they didn’t belong (apparently, he never actually watched “Saved by the Bell”). “More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons,” Ramaswamy wrote. The underlying premise seems to suggest that whimsical childhoods and cultural greatness are mutually exclusive. Parts of his rant sound like the assistant principal in “Uncle Buck.”
There’s a reason the best coming-of-age movies aren’t built around math competitions. Previous generations of Americans enjoyed enchanted, lighthearted childhoods adorned with outdoor adventure and built a society responsible for some of man’s greatest achievements.
The idea that traditional childhoods are handicapping our competitive nature is insane. I spent most of my childhood camping, fishing, and hunting — yet managed to teach my seventh-grade AP algebra class when our teacher was on vacation. Excelling in math at an early age certainly helped, but I wouldn’t trade my outdoor childhood adventures for 100 math trophies. Today’s children need to spend more time outdoors, not less.
Ramaswamy closed by saying we should return to “a culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.” This sounds good, and there’s undoubtedly some truth in here. I want less conformity and more individualism — and who doesn’t want achievement? But some of these ideals fall victim to the “overly vague goals” fallacy I mentioned above. What does “excellence” mean? Maybe Ramaswamy and the average middle-class Trump voter share the same vision of cultural excellence. If that’s the case, Ramaswamy should have worded his post differently.
Going Forward
While certain 2024 trends were encouraging, unless there’s a significant shift in demographic voting patterns, even a modest change to America’s demographics spread across swing states would make it all but impossible for a Republican to win the presidency. If we win the STEM war through an immigration process that ultimately results in one-party rule by Democrats at the federal level, then what did we accomplish?
If the election didn’t make this clear, I’ll state it as plainly as possible: We want less immigration. That includes legal immigrants and H-1B workers. And please stop telling us America will always be as American as ever, regardless of how many foreigners we import. It’s a ridiculous game but one many Americans have played to avoid being smeared as bigots.
If there’s one decisive victory of the Trump era, it’s that we aren’t playing that game anymore, and the name-calling in response is no longer a deterrent. America has done its share of charitable immigration. We’ve welcomed people from every part of the world. It’s time to put Americans first, and that includes reforming the H-1B visa program.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.