There’s been a lot of commotion in the social media sphere about the H-1B visa program over the last several days. On X, Elon Musk tweeted about the lack of native-born engineers and the need for engineers in the tech world, amplifying the H-1B visa controversy President-Elect Trump’s pick of Sriram Krishnan for senior advisor on artificial intelligence triggered; and while Musk desired to promote the practice, or at least defend it, the unintended consequence of his tweets was to raise awareness of, and thus opposition to the practice. Musk’s DoGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy worsened things by blaming American culture for the lack of native-born engineers. The United States prizes the jock over the nerd, Ramaswamy tweeted. Musk has since accused opponents of the H-1B visa program—the heart of the America First movement—of racism.
Progressives and the corporate state they shill for, all in on open borders, devoted to the cause of transnationalism and the high-tech serfdom that comes with it, love the schism this has produced between tech bros and MAGA, wondering aloud how the historically pro-business Republicans could oppose immigration when there is such a need for skilled immigrants. What they mean to accomplish is obvious enough: to set the central issue of the 2024 campaign on its head. Musk’s smearing of MAGA as racists, and his move to restrict the speech of some of the most prominent populists on X, couldn’t be more out of the corporate state playbook.
To some degree, the controversy rests on a false dilemma, one that’s meant to make Republicans look like hypocrites, in addition to driving a wedge between Trump and his allies (Musk and Ramaswamy’s DoGE project is another obvious target). However, many rank-and-file Republicans aren’t against immigration per se. They’re for selective immigration and in opposition to illegal immigration.
To be sure, the H-1B visa program is a special problem. I disagree with Trump on this issue. My view is that international students can get an education here, then go back to their country and improve it for their fellow citizens. No automatic green card. No chain migration. Moreover, Moreover, community colleges should be exclusively for citizens of the United States; the point of the community college system is to provide an opportunity for working class Americans to develop skills to scale the socioeconomic ladder. For comparison, watch Trump explain his position:
How we go about legal immigration is the debate to be had. We should repeal the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. This is because what is really at the heart of the concern over immigration is national sovereignty and cultural integrity, since we cannot keep the first if we undermine the second. We should reform the H-1B visa program to exclude the automatic rewarding of a green card, as well as end the practice of chain migration. And we should invest billions in expanding our community college and technical school system and recruiting low-income students to them.
Many of those who hear my arguments concerning immigration probably suppose the same thing about me that they about MAGA Republicans—that I am anti-immigrant. But in my writings on this, I have always stressed that I do not categorically oppose immigration. My wife is an immigrant and a naturalized citizen (for more than twenty years now). I not only know and work with immigrants, but have hired and retained them.
The reason I rededicated myself to this platform, Freedom and Reason, in the summer of 2018 was having witnessed the migrant crisis firsthand during my research trip to Scandinavia. There I saw a stark difference between older arrivals to Sweden, for example Persians who escaped the tyranny of clerical fascism, and new arrivals from the Middle East and North Africa. One group has elevated Sweden. The other is turning it into a shit-hole. Culture matters.
My criticism of the prevailing immigration policy is primarily about the tolerance, even encouragement by Democrats and establishment Republicans, for large-scaled immigration from the Third World. This is especially true of low-skilled labor. The livelihoods of the most vulnerable among native Americans are undermined by cheap foreign labor (more on this in a moment). As for the need for high-skilled labor, we need to do a better job in our educational system of steering native-born talent into technical programs where they can learn the necessary skills. At the same time, because the tech sector is always expanding (exponentially so), there will likely always be a need for some foreign talent—but not the H-1B visa program as it currently exists.
But the tech industry wants foreign workers not merely because they can’t find the talent here. That argument has always been something of a ruse. It’s not only the best and the brightest being invited to learn, train, and/or work in America. The capitalist-intensive sector wants cheap high-skilled labor just as much as the labor-intensive sector wants cheap low-skilled workers—and these sectors are not mutually exclusive.
The business elite desire a system of modern indentured servitude, where foreign workers so desperate to escape the inferior conditions of their home country that they will settle for far less than the market can pay, thus driving up corporate profits. The bonus is the green card and the path to citizen. What about the Einsteins we’re told we’d be missing out on? After all, we built our space program using foreign talent, right? True. But look at the numbers. They were few. And they came from Europe, bearing European culture. And they assimilated. Not all cultures are compatible with American culture. Not all culture-bearer assimilate with American culture.
The purpose of promoting mass immigration from the Third World is manifold. First, the obvious: the superexploitation of cheap foreign labor. Second, capitalists strive to diminish opportunities and wages for native-born workers in low-income and labor-intensive sectors, millions of whom have already been ghettoized and made dependent on welfare. The displaced millions comprise Marx’s industrial reserve army, except the capitalists never intend to use them during expansionary periods. The first and second are strategies for the maximization of surplus value, and racism is central to the project. Third, capitalist disorganize the political organization and class solidarity among workers via cultural pluralism and unfair competition. This has long been a strategy in class warfare. And, four, the Democratic Party seeks to enlarge its constituency. By changing the nation’s demographic composition, and by creating more dependency on the party and big government, the party of the corporate state and transnationalism produces more of those who vote for a living.
This manifold strategy, with some articulation (e.g., many foreigners come with degrees that their home countries paid for), also works for highly skilled labor in capital-intensive sectors. And while it may seem more difficult to raise the skill level of potential American workers given circumstance, if Third World countries can do it, then that can be accomplished here, as well. After all, given circumstance, it’s hard to deploy the industrial reserve army in labor-intensive sectors—but we should. To be sure, there is in the way a profound obstacle, and not the one Ramaswamy claims. It’s not that we prize the jock over the nerd in America; it’s that the government rewards idleness and tolerates a subculture of crime and violence.
The propaganda depicting those who share my position as “anti-immigrant,” “nativist,” “racist,” and “xenophobic,” is part of the four-fold strategy I just described, since mutual knowledge about the purpose of mass immigration builds popular support for a more restrictive policy and deportation of those who are illegally here. The propagandists are doing the same thing in Europe, because Europeans have had enough of it, too. The elite need to make those of us who care about national sovereignty and cultural integrity look backwards and prejudiced. They conflate race, culture, and immigration to produce an easily digestible meme to rule our subconscious.
I beseech you, don’t let the corporate state propagandists warp the populist-nationalist position concerning immigration. Ask instead why rank-and-file workers should support open borders and resist deportation. It’s not in their popular interests. Hold fast to principle. Trump has in back of him the will of a majority of Americans. It’s not merely what Trump wants. It’s what the people want. Indeed, in the end, it’s really about what the people want. As for Trump himself, he needs to reflect long and hard on any decision that would walk back the reason the multitude voted for him.
freedom and reason 