H-1B redux and a slightly deeper discussion

Thanks to Andy in Japan for this link to a post visualizing the H-1B problem. As I've watched this debate grow and develop over the past few days, I've tried to keep an open mind because I simply didn't know much about the issues, about why so many MAGA people were upset, and why so many parties think that Elon and Vivek are betraying the country.

What's the problem?

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to head up the DOGE organization, i.e., the Department of Government Efficiency, recently made a series of remarks, in interviews and tweets, about H-1B visas and American culture that have gotten elements in the conservative base riled up and feeling betrayed. Vivek had tweeted (slightly edited):

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the Math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates.)

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

[ ... ]

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

A lot of Americans didn't take this too well, but I personally see nothing wrong with what Vivek said. Follow the money: Americans prioritize sports, porn, video games, social media, movies, and junk food—not necessarily in that order. Vivek is right that we've become a mediocrity factory at the national level. Elon Musk, meanwhile, got in trouble for comparing America to a sports team where you hire outside talent if you want to win. Calling America a corporation or a sports team didn't sit well with a certain sector of the American right. Meanwhile, the left has stood back and gloated while these internal ructions have been happening. But the discussion gets a lot more complicated than just this.

What are H-1B visas?

Wikipedia: "The H-1B is a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H), that allows United States employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. It is the largest visa category in the United States in terms of guest worker numbers."

Berkeley International Office: "H-1B status is available to a person who has been offered a temporary professional position by a U.S. employer. A bachelor's degree or higher in a related area is the minimum educational level required for a position to qualify for H-1B status, and the H-1B employee must have this degree (or higher)."

Elon Musk recently tweeted, in an attempt to clarify his stance and mollify the rightie public:

Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.

 

This is like bringing in the Jokics or Wembys of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA.

 

Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.

This is apparently what H-1B visas are supposed to be. Musk isn't totally wrong to think this way, but it's possible he's out of touch with the reality of H-1Bs.

So what's the reality?

If you click on that very first link above, in the first sentence of this post, you will get an eyeful of data about what's really happening. H-1Bs are a gateway to allowing in a much wider variety of overseas "talent" than just 0.1 percent. One of the first shockers, on that page, is the fact that the government approves ten times the allotted number of employees every year. (In 2024, for example, the limit was 85,000 H-1B employees, but the government approved 868,000 applications, utterly ignoring the "statutory limit" placed on the visa program.) And the folks coming in from overseas are far from elite talent: these are not "Jokics and Wembys." The reality is also that America, in fact, has plenty of home-grown talent, something that Vince Dao discusses in a recent video. Dao also notes that, despite the left's sneering that the right seems to be falling apart over this issue, what's really happening is a spirited discussion the like of which cannot ever happen on the ideologically rigid left as it's currently constituted. The right will, if anything, come out stronger because of this discussion.

What's the state of the discussion, then?

As alluded to above, the right isn't falling apart. To paraphrase one Instapundit commenter, "Mommy and Daddy aren't fighting; we're just talking." A discussion is a healthy thing, and it's good that this issue got caught before Trump assumed office (Trump himself seems to have wavered on the issue, starting out thoroughly against the H-1B visa program at first, then softening his stance later).

At this point, and this is merely my impression after reading and listening to a lot of commentary, it seems that everyone agrees the H-1B system is broken. The idea might be sound in principle, but the system needs radical reform. As angry MAGA folks are rightly pointing out, it is another point of hemorrhage allowing foreign talent into the US and deprioritizing American workers, many of whom graduate with STEM and IT degrees and certificates, yet are unable to get jobs in their fields because the system is already clogged with H-1B workers, most of whom seem willing to work for relatively cheap. This is little different from the globalist-neocon idea of farming labor out to cheap, foreign sources as a way to save money. It is the antithesis of MAGA's agenda.

At the same time, Vivek's point about American culture having become a hotbed of mediocrity still stands. While it's true that the US still produces top-flight talent, it's also true that our universities (along with our military and other sectors of the society and the economy) have become ideology factories more concerned with stupidities like DEI than with actually producing hardworking people of merit. This is not an either-or, black-and-white issue. The principle behind H-1B visas is a good one, but the actual implementation has been botched for years, and this needs to change. If anything, the system needs to be reformed first, before we can move any further in the discussion. And as many have suggested, there should be, in consonance with the America First agenda, more of a focus on giving good jobs to homegrown talent. The "Jokics and Wembys" are already here, already among us.

If anything, I come away heartened that the country is having this spirited discussion. As one commenter wryly noted, imagine if Kamala had won: we'd all be begging her not to let in trillions more illegals instead of concentrating on things like STEM jobs and intellectual capital. Let's see the left try for this level of introspection.