Elon Musk, who spent the entire presidential campaign whipping the MAGA crowd into an anti-immigrant fervor, got involved in a Twitter scuffle today over H-1B visas for Indian engineers. Unsurprisingly, he's for them. But he was apparently sort of shocked to discover that the racists he baited during the campaign are...... racists. They don't care if Indians are smart or not. They just don't want 'em:
If you want the longer version of what went down, Noah Smith has you covered here.
Now, it so happens there are a lot of Indian immigrants in the US. They're second only to Mexicans:
The thing about Indian immigrants that makes them unique is that pretty much only the smartest ones come here. A million Indians have immigrated to the US over the past decade, and that's a lot. But it accounts for less than 0.1% of the Indian population. And the ones who come to America aren't just any old 0.1%, they're more or less the top 0.1% of the country. They're the ones who scored astronomically on national tests and graduated from the top universities. So it's no surprise they're super successful here. The top 0.1% of any country would be.
So do we want to welcome them to America? Hell yes. They're going to do great stuff no matter where they are, so our choice is either to compete against them or have them compete for us against the rest of the world. That's a no-brainer. Even the racists would get it if, instead of engineers, we were talking about football players. They eventually got used to Black guys playing basketball, after all.
But Musk still needs to learn what he's gotten himself roped into. He may have thought that all the MAGA folks who cheered his "woke mind virus" and anti-DEI schtick were doing it for noble reasons,¹ but today he learned that it's mostly just because they don't like brown people with funny accents. We'll see if he manages to remember this.
¹Although, honestly, that's hard to believe. Musk isn't just a smart guy, he's a smart guy from South Africa. He knows from racism.
I guess what Elon Musk learned about “free speech” is that if he controls the platform he can decide what is “free” and what isn’t. I note that he has suspended the accounts of a number of MAGAts because he doesn’t like what they are saying about H1B visas.
A fourteen course meal of schadenfreude.
Kevin, as most folks who look at H1-B visa holders from 20,000 feet -- or through the eyes of penny-pinching CEO's -- have a very fuzzy picture of those "immigrants". H1-B software engineers, for example, run the gamut of the talent continuum. Some of them are quite good, some are decent, many are clueless. The good ones, without exception, come by the way of American universities and tutelage. Nearly all of engineers working on H1-B visas are nothing extraordinary.
If you can comfortably ignore the plight of our Have Nots, you're gonna love the GOP economic plan . . . for awhile. No guilt trip because those lazy welfare cheaters have ERs and soup kitchens.
Replace "Have Nots" with "all immigrants", and . . . . It's sadly articulated in the flick Big Short-
”I have a feeling, in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people."
Agree the economy is far from "tanked" but thanks to Trump & Fox, many think it has
I still wonder if as much influence as Musk has now, Murdock has even more.
I'm so old I can remember when there were rich people from certain parts of the world who brought in domestic retainers when living here and confiscated their passports, then forced them to work pretty much around the clock and wouldn't let them leave the premises. This was illegal on several counts and was a scandal.
I don't see much practical difference between that and H1B as it operates these days, except that H1B is legal. No wonder Musk likes it. It seems to be the closest thing we have to indentured servitude these days, except for prison labor in some states.
Are you old enough to remember when US Tax revenues were about 55% from Wall Street and 45% from Main St?
Ratio reverse "corrected" , . . . Thanks to K-St
Given the not too distant memories of the Colin Kaepernick (?) drama and the rarity of POCs in QB, front office and coaching positions, literally no-one would be surprised if Kevin's 'sports exception' evaporates before our eyes in the near future.
As a sports fan and former season ticket holder with a few teams....the racism expressed by fans towards the players on their team was always surprising. More like cheering on the plantation workers as long as they knew their place.....
The thing about Indian immigrants that makes them unique is that pretty much only the smartest ones come here.
Actually, no. The number of the "smartest" ones still in India vastly exceeds the number that are here as immigrants. The ones who come here are better identified by their drive and ambition, because it is easier to be successful in the US than it is in India for a given level of smart and effort. Less competition, bias, regulation etc.
Been to a 7-11 lately? Or a motel?
"Been to a 7-11 lately? Or a motel?"
Touche'!
+1
I said something like this up thread, and I'm glad you restated this idea because it is "drive and ambition" that is the most important quality we gain from immigration.
Going further, immigration repeatedly renews our spirit and is what makes us the exceptional nation.
Immigrants are self-selected for gumption, nerve and willingness to leave the familiar behind to strike out in a new land. Rather than staying home and making do, these are the people with the audacity to leave their friends and families and everything they know.
Thus the best immigrants are not the ones with high skills who can step into success here and know it. Our reinvigoration comes from those with nothing but their courage and their confidence that they can build a new life here. These are the brave ones, the
ones who will proudly call themselves "American".
I'll include the original English settlers, who themselves embodied the same spirit when they left England in their own day.
This boldness speaks to the essence of what made America, and is our unique national characteristic.
"our choice is either to compete against them or have them compete for us against the rest of the world"
The word "compete" is doing a lot of work here. Who is competing? Workers or capitalists? Are workers properly rewarded when they compete successfully against foreign workers or companies? If a foreign company makes a better product and sells it here for less, is that kind of "competition" bad?
Until "compete" is properly defined with explicit winners and losers, it's use in an argument is sophistry.
As is so often the case, Kevin, you're more interested in scoring points than in understanding the situation.
There was some initial back and forth because various sides misunderstood the assumptions and experiences of the other side. BUT what happened was that, once this was realized (day 2, as opposed to the day 1 you are fixated on) data was brought to the situation.
So what does the data say?
- H1B use by the Bay Area is (kinda sorta) using the system as intended, hiring tech people. They are mostly not best in the world, at least to judge from their salaries, which are generally middle of the road, not at the high end. But this is probably fine, tech has many specialties and the system is probably working as intended and desired if we import people with those specialties.
- OUTSIDE the Bay Area a very different company profile is hiring, and mostly for sweatshop type jobs -- nominally "tech" but not especially skilled.
Which one of these you see depends on where you work, and each side was blind to the other side.
Here's an example of the sort of syntheses that we are seeing over the past few hours:
https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1872762250228064696
Here are some of the data points that fed into that synthesis:
https://x.com/ProdigalThe3rd/status/1872175817968501145
https://x.com/USTechWorkers/status/1855337796837507261
https://x.com/triplebankshot/status/1872391824188518844
Ultimately this is an example of X working exactly the way it is meant to. You can focus on the idiots if you want to drag yourself down to their level. Or you can focus on the intelligent people, trying to understand the different viewpoints, then trying to find the data to decide between them, then providing that data to settle the issue.
There's no shortage of opportunities to learn to code in America. Lots of universities don't have computer science departments because they're expensive to run, but for those who can't get into a college CS program there are plenty of online resources.
It takes a certain kind of brain to be a software engineer. I tried learning to code once and it just didn't take, so I pursued a different career path. I do not blame tech managers for hiring only people who already know how to code and not doing on-the-job training from scratch. This is not a job that anyone can do with a bit of training.
Another edition of “Elon Musk is smart” and yet….
It's awkward that the opportunities we offer immigrants produces a brain drain in the countries they leave.
I taught science for a few years at a teachers college in a deeply undeveloped country. Far less developed than China or India; my college was the only school above high school in the whole country. I'd encourage the really bright ones, which meant they had to get their real education somewhere overseas.
Then there was no place for them to use their talents at home, and they’d often stay away. Made me sick.
I don't think he's that smart. A smart person would know what a stupid idea colonizing Mars is. A smart guy wouldn't make a taxi with only two seats. A smart guy wouldn't convince himself that sleeping owners will actually let their self driving cars be rented by a bunch of barflies to puke in, all for the sake of helping Musk get richer.
This is hillarious. The MAGA crowned King of Free Speech has a tarnished crown. https://newrepublic.com/post/189683/elon-musk-critics-x-immigration-paid-price-verification