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.
The thing about Indian immigrants that makes them unique is that pretty much only the smartest ones come here.
Isn't something like that always the case with immigrants?
For every group it's been the ones with the most gumption and initiative who have the courage to pick up and leave everything familiar behind to remake their lives in a strange country.
Most people in a bad situation keep their heads down and carry on. We skim off the ones who can't take it back home and are willing to take a risk and strike out in a new direction.
We are the exceptional nation because we've remade ourselves again and again with vigorous new strivers. It's the vigor, not the smarts, that makes a desirable new American.
Isn't something like that always the case with immigrants?
No, I don't think so, given you were responding to the assertion that "pretty much only the smartest" immigrants come to America.
Obviously many immigrants are highly intelligent people and/or are very well educated. But nonetheless very significant percentage of immigrants to the United States don't get admitted because they're highly educated, but because they've won the DNA lottery (ie, they have family in the US) or because they immigrated in violation of the country's laws (ie, they're undocumented).
I'm an immigration enthusiast, for what it's worth, and neither of the above facts particularly bothers me. Still, if it were up to me, we'd more aggressively go after the planet's highly skilled. I mean, it's absolute madness we force many foreign graduates of schools like MIT and Cal Tech to leave the United States. The British now hand out green cards to graduates of highly selective schools (that is, including non-UK universities) even if they haven't yet found a job in Britain.
In many ways America is the king of own goals. Sigh.
The most popular baby name in Britain last year was Muhammad. If you take an honest poll, I don't think many people are going to want to emulate the UK's immigration laws.
Where did mclovin fall on the list?
Wow, Atticus with the bigotry right out of the box.
We sure wouldn't expect less from the guy who supports policies which kill more mothers and infants, as well as murderers who threaten people with cars.
So you think most Americans would support immigration policies that result in Muhammed being the number one baby name? You truly believe that?
Muhammad is #5 on England's list of baby boy names.
But please, continue enlightening us.
You are incorrect. But please, continue enlightening us.
This was reported widely a few weeks ago.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly4g2v0ej6o
Most of the Muhammad's are not the children of graduates of selective universities. They are a combination of Commonwealth citizens with preferential immigration and refugees.
Very few H1-B visa holders -- and it's not an immigration visa -- are brilliant MIT students. Majority are just fine or mediocre; but I am sure that there's a handful of exceptional engineers. This is not, however, why H1B visa is so popular. It's not about finding exceptional talent. It's about having a somewhat captive workforce, as it is more difficult for H1B visa holders to change jobs.
This. As long as they're stuck with an employer, and receive immigration repercussions for reporting labor violations, they're a preferred hiring choice.
Back in the day, I looked up stats of where most H1B visa holders are employed. About half of them worked for consulting companies, i.e. tech worker brokers. These companies have no business of their own and simply resell tech labor.
And what's wrong with that? Seems like a reasonable cost of admission to let people into the country and fill jobs that could be filled by Americans. Turnover is costly for employers.
So, you think slavery was a good idea. Not surprised.
What an absurd comment.
When I got my MBA my employer paid for it. But I had to agree to work for them for two years after obtaining my degree or pay back the benefit I received. I willingly entered into this agreement. But, in your opinion, I guess I made myself a slave?
Not the same power dynamic.
Your degree credential is good for life. No one can threaten to take it from you.
If Indians were getting guaranteed citizenship in exchange for two years of servitude there might be an analogy here.
That is easy to fix. Give qualified individuals portable work visas valid as long as they are working at a job that pays above $X or otherwise have sufficient financial resources to support themselves and their families.
This is largely true. You've reframed it to to a larger skill set that will allow immigrants to succeed instead of Kevin's narrow focus of pretending to know which Indians are the 'smartest'.
Pretending to know which brown ones are the uniquely smart ones who are worthy of partial acceptance has been long accepted as not as racist as the people who look down on every brown person.
Indian programmers are not better immigrants even if we want to pretend that they are.
I've worked with many Indians over the years. I assure you they are all much better immigrants than that illegal piece of trash that set the woman on fire in a NY subway.
Speaking of being in a constant panic about brown people.....
Which ones? Indians or the illegal piece of trash?
By far, most people from south of the border are better than the murderer in question. Do you think that there has never been an H1B visa holder who has committed a horrible crime?
And the racism again.
Not mentioning the sterling example who executed someone on a train the year prior, I guess, since that's somehow better?
And the stupidity and race baiting again. When will it end? Why can't we block trolls like Crissa?
"It's the vigor, not the smarts, that makes a desirable new American."
That is true. Smarts can be important, but give me someone who is "smart enough" and has drive to spare. That's the one who'll make the greater contribution.
A small example. We have a stone block wall in our front yard that needed repair. First three estimates said work would take 4 to 8 days and I'd need to order new stone blocks. Fourth guy was an immigrant whose English was just good enough. His quote was less than half the best price of the others, and added a drain and cement support. He started Monday morning and was done before lunch on Tuesday using only the blocks we already had. A first-rate quality job.
Seems to me a lot of anti-immigrant anger is from Americans who don't like the extra competition.
I don’t think it helps Musk’s cause to have his partner in DOGE say that the reason Americans aren’t getting hired in tech is because Americans are culturally inferior to Indians.
We are culturally inferior.
We are the culture that invented participation trophies, safe spaces, and A for Effort
We don't see Participation Trophy Indians. We only see the Graduate School Indians. Just like that Tiger Mom BS that all Chinese children play at Carnegie Hall - someone drives the taxicabs in Beijing.
Although Indian and Chinese immigrants weight more heavily toward the highly educated, that is not universally true. Distance and water are factors limiting the flow of low-resource immigrants under current conditions. Hence, a greater variety of immigrants come overland over the southern border. However, there have been times when people from southeast Asia risked the voyage across the pacific in search of a life in America as well. Ellis island welcomed all sorts when the pathway was available to jump an immigration ship from Europe still existed.
There are no participation trophy Indians. India has no participation trophies.
I lived many years in China. My fiance is the daughter of parents who started with more menial jobs than taxicab driver and still aren't very high on the economic ladder. Everything they made went into supporting their daughters education.
China has an incredibly Darwinian system and it produces an insane number of STEM graduates. When I started in China American and British engineers used to set up garment production lines. Today, US and UK don't have people with that capability but China has tens of thousands, some of whom are hired by Bangladeshi and Pakistan factories to help manage their production processes.
I love it when people say stuff like this, crapping on how "We" Americans are fat or lazy or [insert insult here].
Like, are YOU part of this "We"?
Did you give your kids participation trophies and coddle them and make them lazy stupid slobs who deserve to be poor?
Ha ha, of course not. In these sorts of constructions, "We" really just means "Some people I happen to dislike". The speaker, by contrast, is always smart and hard working and disciplined.
A majority of Americans will tell you they are better than average drivers.
But then again "we" are bad with math.
The speaker is MF, who is always quick with a racist comment, and weighed in supporting murderers.
I'm curious who you think I am being racist against here. White Americans?
No.
I have told my kids that effort is important but only because that is the only way to excel. They will both happily tell you that participation trophies are an insult to anyone who plans to win and that their objective is to kill and eat the hindmost.
They are ten years behind in learning Arabic (mandatory subject where we now live) so their grades suck. We have agreed on a performance improvement plan and I am competing with them on Duolingo Arabic so they can catch up with their classmates on alphabet as a first step.
Right, just as I thought.
Yes. Obviously I try not to let my children be influenced by parts of the culture I dislike.
I am also trying to convince them not to smoke cigarettes, vape, or use pot.
We welcome them to Australia, too. We more than welcome them; we entice them to come with immigration rules that let them become legal residents with minimal fuss. We meet skills shortages caused by the inadequacies of our own education system by bribing them to come live here after a struggling third world nation has paid for them to become engineers, or doctors, or nurses, or whatever IT people call themselves these days.
This capitalist imperialism that continues to exploit 19th century colonialism is profoundly immoral. Sooner or later, it will trigger a damaging backlash. China hasn't been spending more than $300 billion a year on STEM education to see America giving green cards to the best 10% so its corporations can reap the benefits.
This capitalist imperialism that continues to exploit 19th century colonialism is profoundly immoral. Sooner or later, it will trigger a damaging backlash. China hasn't been spending more than $300 billion a year on STEM education to see America giving green cards to the best 10% so its corporations can reap the benefits.
Oh brother. This stance is mind-blowingly wrong.
The freedom of individuals to live where they will infinitely outweighs any particular government's "right" to a return on its education investment. Human freedom is paramount. People aren't tools for the furtherance of state goals.
Moreover, rich countries really aren't doing developing nations a favor when they restrict skilled immigration: governments in such states should be under as much pressure as possible to get their shit together, to reform, and to improve quality of life, and overall effectiveness of governance.
I can't think of a better way to give the CCP (or any other developing country government) a free pass than to make it impossible for their best and brightest to leave China.
Indeed, if Washington were actually serious about waging what is supposedly the new Cold War, the US would be exerting maximum pressure on China by hoovering up as much top-flight Chinese talent as possible (instead, the US is now doing just the opposite, by making it difficult and inconvenient for high-achieving Chinese to immigrate. Dumb.)
"Indeed, if Washington were actually serious about waging what is supposedly the new Cold War, the US would be exerting maximum pressure on China by hoovering up as much top-flight Chinese talent as possible (instead, the US is now doing just the opposite, by making it difficult and inconvenient for high-achieving Chinese to immigrate. Dumb.)"
Yep. The problem is that the American right-wing doesn't trust American capitalism. It's the same reason we have tried and failed to bring the Cuban government down by boycotts instead of flooding the island with American goods.
"American right-wing doesn't trust American capitalism" well, they're not wrong there. American capitalism is amoral, it worships the almighty dollar and the only heaven is an above average growth rate.
The American right-wing has been absorbed by Christian Nationalists (who are known to like a buck or three themselves) and philosophically their aims are not the same.
American capitalists worship mammon and displays of material wealth. They have no higher power than their tax accountant and wealth manager. They have no interest in spreading the gospel, saving souls, and bowing the glory of any god.
It's an arranged marriage that works for both sides to a point, but neither one trusts the other.
So countries like India are doing their best to educate and train their citizens but American takes them because they will work for less than Americans?
Can't America educate its own citizens to do these jobs? Why do we need to exploit the education systems of less-developed countries?
How are we exploiting the education systems of other countries? By hiring their graduates?
Yes.
Sounds like that is the opposite of exploitation. Why would they be falling all over themselves to be "exploited"?
Cute but transparent shift of the goalposts from "exploiting the education systems" to "exploiting the graduates".
Fair enough. How are we exploiting their education systems?
India is not doing that. The parents who can afford to send their kids to American Universities are doing that, which is where the best Indian engineers come from. The ones that were educated in India are more than often mediocre.
"People aren't tools for the furtherance of state goals"? What do you call America deliberately recruiting the world's best and brightest to keep the good old USA #1?
And the idea America subscribes to the sanctity of "the freedom of individuals to live where they will" is indescribably idiotic.
What do you call America deliberately recruiting the world's best and brightest to keep the good old USA #1?
It's unambiguously morally correct for a nation to benefit from the profound increase in human freedom that flows from opening its doors to people who want to live there. Maximizing the freedom of human beings is precisely the opposite of treating them as tools.
If the government losing workers is threatened by this dynamic, it needs to improve national conditions.
Reducing the pressure on dysfunctional (or authoritarian, or repressive, or inept) states to improve governance doesn't help anyone
Grin.
Fuck China.
Let them change their system so their best and brightest want to stay or let them raise their Bamboo Curtain again and prohibit their top 10% from traveling. (Last part is happening. More and more government officials are either named from leaving the country or not allowed to travel at same time as their families. Even school teachers are facing limits.). Either way they screen themselves. Many smart and rich people are getting out now with or without their assets because there is a sense that the door may close soon.
Some of our progressive politicians have felt compelled to try to add anti caste discrimination laws. I do not believe they have succeeded.
That's because it's already illegal.
We don't differentiate between race/ethnicity/surname that's all discrimination based on origin.
There's no case law where there was doubt, either.
It’s already illegal to discriminate based on sex too, and yet lots of trans people and people who don’t conform to the expectations of their sex seem to face actual discrimination all over the place.
It’s possible for something to be illegal and also widespread. Just look at any road and you’ll find people exceeding legally-enforceable speed limit signs.
That's true, but additional laws won't help bigotry. Actual programs and enforcement will.
So which categori(es) does "caste" fall under? Race? Ethnicity? Surname?
Yes.
Noted, you didn't cite a case where the court was confused as to whether the law did or didn't apply.
Of course I didn't! However, because other commenters stated that laws explicitly saying that caste discrimination was illegal suggested a need to plug that loophole.
Laws can't ban "bigotry", although they can penalize bigoted actions. Unless we get good at detecting thought crime. Then we can all enjoy the conformity.
Seattle does have a caste anti discrimination law.
You mean... defeating the "woke mind virus" didn't solve all problems?
Don't forget that one of the reasons Musk wants workers on these visas is that they will work longer hours for less pay in exchange for the visa sponsorship. When he took over Twitter the people who left did so because they could while the H-1B workers were more or less stuck having to put up with Musk's BS. This is what Musk wants, not engineers. He even said it directly in another post that these workers might not be the most talented, but they will work 60+ hour weeks without complaining.
I disagree with Musk on most issues, but he's right about this with respect to the big picture: It's good for the United States to allow talented, well-educated foreigners to work (and ultimately settle full time) in the country.
But yes, the H1B program ought to be reformed to address some of the problems you cite. At minimum, such workers ought to be able to accept offers of employment from other employers (perhaps after a 6 month probationary period?). It's not good for either foreign or American workers to have a cohort of "captive" workers on US soil.
Why should it be a six month period? If an employer can't keep them, that's on the employer.
Well, to clarify, H1B workers are allowed to switch jobs—it's just very cumbersome (paperwork, filing fees, uncertainty, etc).
I'd like to see H1B workers cut completely loose: the work permit would functionally be the equivalent of green card. They'd be able to switch jobs as easily as Americans.
Now, I'm open to the idea of simply getting rid of the H1B program altogether in favor of a something a lot more liberalized (like, just allowing biggish increases in permanent immigration, at least for skilled workers).
But if we are going to maintain an H1B program but substantially liberalize it along the lines I've suggested above ("completely cut loose"), we probably need to give employers a period of exclusivity, or else they'd have very little incentive to deal with the paperwork and costs of sponsoring foreign workers in the first place.
So yes: I think immigration is a good in and of itself that makes our country stronger. To the extent that the H1B program provides a conduit for immigration, it's a good system, and I'd be reluctant to see it collapse due to massive drop in the incentive to bring in foreigners. (But again, I'd be happy to see it wholesale replaced with something more liberalized and expansive.)
>He knows from...
Ooooh! Did you do that on purpose? I thought that was a South Africa only thing.
Well, the construction has certainly been present in the US for a while. Apparently it comes from Yiddish:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/220193/meaning-and-derivation-of-so-and-so-would-know-from-x
Interesting, thanks!
In Afrikaans, "Hy weet van ..." = "He knows about ..." and "Hy kom van ..." = "He comes from ..." so "van" means both from and about and we use it like that sometimes.
But we also have some Yiddish in the vocabulary, like "drek" and "kak" but chances are they came to Afrikaans from the same source as where Yiddish got it. Etymology is fascinating.
I guess if you think Twitter, Facebook, instagram, video games, online shopping, and targeted ads are some great inventions, then these tech engineers are needed. I’m not impressed. If none of those engineers had come to America and none of this technology had been developed, we’d be better off.
Sure they make money for Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos. So what? We pretend all this technology represents progress when it doesn’t.
Where I work, there are quite a few people from India who are contractors and a couple of them have phd in engineering. The work they are actually doing does not require phd level education. Or even an engineering degree really. It’s kinda funny.
If none of those engineers had come to America and none of this technology had been developed, we’d be better off.
Your ignorance is truly jaw-dropping.
America would be vastly poorer. without "engineers who come to America." Have you seen the market caps of some of these firms? As of mid October, five of the six enterprises worth more than $1 trillion were American (Saudi Aramco was the other).
https://www.investopedia.com/biggest-companies-in-the-world-by-market-cap-5212784
America is blowing away the global competition on growth and productivity, and our immigrants play a key role.
https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/1785325677496967212
The rich get richer… you have different priorities. But of course you do… you’ve been living in China for some time, allegedly.
You assume that this economy is the best one. I don’t. What if we made different choices? The main premise of liberalism is that we shouldn’t leave so many people behind. Capitalism has failed to deliver for lots of people.
What are you talking about? It's not just the CEOs of the companies that benefit. It's the (however many) thousands of those company's employees that benefit. It's the merchants and vendors where those thousands of employees spend their earnings that benefit. And so on and so on.
That’s the case with every business. But it doesn’t mean we have to staff these companies with immigrants or visa holders. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a politically fraught topic all over the country. Why poke the bear to entertain and enrich some asshole tech bros?
What is the definition of a "tech bro"? Is it a derogatory term? Can a man work in the tech industry and not be a "tech bro"? I work in Finance. Am I by default a "Finance bro"? Is my dentist a "dentist bro"?
This is partially tongue in cheek but partially a serious question. I see people using the term "bro" but have not seen it defined. Does it imply anything other than being a male?
Urban dictionary says… 😂
An educated male lacking in social skills who also happens to work in tech.
Many of them are libertarians who simp for Elon Musk, and/or people trying to reinvent the wheel with some dumb new technology.
It’s the attitude amongst some that they are “better” than other people, exemplified by this Elon Musk tweet when he suspended the accounts of MAGA influencers who disagreed with him:
“My tolerance for subtards is limited”
you don't know what people mean when they say "tech bro"?
I've heard it used for other industries as well (e.g. pharma bro, crypto bro, finance bro). Or sometimes just "bro" without any industry. Seems like the term is just used for a male that did something or possesses some attribute that the person using the term "bro" doesn't like. Is there a female equivalent?
Seems like you're fixated on toxic masculinity because you can't insert your usual misogyny.
Watching two bigot commenters argue is fascinating. They actually say reasonable things, but still refuse to agree.
Good one. Again with the trolling.
Since Americans invented those this (my spouse built one of the first online shopping carts in the very early 90s)... And the one Americans didn't invent are easily transmitted over the internet...
Again, Justin offers only bigotry.
“ Musk isn't just a smart guy, he's a smart guy from South Africa. He knows from racism.”
Being from South Africa, he not only knows racism, he specifically knows racism against Indians for crying out loud.
See Ghandi, Mohandas, who got his start as a civil rights lawyer in South Africa.
Does he? He seems particularly uninterested in anything not rockets and computers.
I'm more interested in the through line from "science is bad, don't trust experts" to "Americans are dumb. we need to import more smart people."
+1
Biggest laugh of the thread (that's a compliment, not snide). Nailed it. A keeper.
You know, Vivek insulted blue collar and service workers of America, talking down to them like they deserve to be in a lower class.
The tech bros think they know their shit, but thanks to their ignorance, on their own, they've shown everyone just how narrow and simplistic their views are.
I fully embrace the Schadenfreude.
Kevin writes as if Musk were principled. This is usual wingnut behavior: if race baiting won't get you past an election , even if it does so splendidly, you can move on to self-interest. Hypocrisy is not a problem.
I dispute that Musk is so smart if the reaction against Indians surprised him. Has he been in the u.s since 2016?
This is normal behavior for him. He really doesn't understand people, or social dynamics at all. Far worse than the typical person with autism spectrum diagnosis... Because on top of this innocence is a disregard to learn about them or hand it off to people who do know.
Having visited South Africa numerous times (and in fact I'll be there again in a few weeks), I think it's pretty easy for some white South Africans to be cognitively insulated from the realities of systemic racism in much the same way that white Southerners in the antebellum South were*: By simply accepting that the status quo is The Way Things Are, and not giving it much conscious thought otherwise, it's easy to overlook just how racist that status quo is. Racism in South Africa is often overt, but much more often casual and what might be described as "offhandedly prejudiced."
And Elon Musk certainly appears to be a person for whom many topics don't warrant much conscious thought.
*Which is not to say that the same attitudes don't still exist today, in the South and elsewhere. It's just harder to plead ignorance these days.
I dare say, in the US, it's not just the Way Things Are, but it's The Way things Should be, and the "natural order".
Without disagreeing that racism is part of what is going on - I cannot think of ANY American tech worker I know who doesn't see the H1-B/outsourcing as a significant threat to the stability and pay of their jobs.
The key is to look at Enterprise tech, not FAANG in Silicon Valley. Look at the age 40+ people who maintain internal systems - they are absolutely under continual threat from the Tata/Infosys/Cognizant/Accenture crowd of H1-B - focused outsourcing firms.
I've long suggested that the H1-B system should prioritize based on salary vs the lottery. That would improve a lot of things.
I have been dealing with H1-B and L1 workers for 20+ years now and for the most part these supposedly "highly skilled" workers are just out of college - they have absolutely no experience. What it has done however is significantly lower wages. My income when I could find work dropped 40% and pretty much stayed that way since then. In other words my income never recovered from what I had been making in 2002. In the last 5 years I was the only American on the teams I worked with and this was for American companies residing in America. Most of the people were in India (around 90%) and the rest here on the various visa's, both groups replacing American workers.
I'm in the life insurance industry and it has been devastated by outsourcing and I suspect others in different industries would have similar experiences.
The H1-B visa is a fraud and is used for nothing more than lowering wages or keeping a lid on current wages.
I'm also in life insurance (valuation actuary) and my experience with tech colleagues is very similar to yours.
I'll also note that jobs like mine that were at entry-level "mathematical bachelors degree, and we'll train you" 20 years ago are now dominated by "specialized 1-year masters degree" at entry-level - the masters programs are basically selling visas, but it saves the companies a few thousand dollars per employee of training cost.
Thank you for this. The reason for the H1B visas has to do with labor costs, nothing more, nothing less. The work that Indians do can be done by plenty of Americans and the fact that they Indians come from their highest strata if their society does not change the fact that coding is just coding, it does not matter whether you come from a wealthy family or have a middle class background.
All the more to make sure that they have to pay competitive rates and allow H1Bs to jump ship if there's a better offer or their host violates labor laws.
Your example is not true, in no way was there an inflection point where H1Bs lowered pay rates by 40%.
...pass the popcorn please...
I'm not sure I want to see the outcome of a war between racism and greed.
Are people actually claiming Indian society isn't classist, sexist, and racist? Seriously? Under what theory do you think the people who come here are immune from their society? I Don't care if we let anyone in if they want to work, but to deny the history of India is wrong.
“I didn’t realize the leopards would eat my workers’ faces,” sobs world’s richest man who supported the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
“Dark meat is tastier,” replied a leopard outside the multibillionaire’s offices in Texas when questioned why he prefers to eat immigrant faces more than native-born ones.
"...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. ..."
There is no way the top .1% of Indians all emigrated to the US over the last decade. Maybe they mostly came from the top half.
And wealthy. That is a difference with Asian immigrants in general that people fail to notice. To get here from Asia takes MONEY.
This is untrue.
There is a long tradition, in China at least, of families borrowing from everyone in the village to pay a snake head to bring one person to the US. That person them works his ass off in the US to make money to pay everyone back, then bring over wife, brothers, etc.
One of my friends in high school was the child of parents like that. We used to study after school in the Chinese restaurant his mom waited tables in. The owner let her give us free food.
My friend went to the same university as me and then straight to Wall Street where he made bank. He have his parents most of his salary and they started buying small multifamily apartment houses in Queens.
They started impoverished and became rich
That's not how math works.
There's different people over several decades.
My guess is that Trump will make a show of deporting a few people but for the most part nothing of substance will happen. The right wing noise machine will not call him on it but will highlight how some city official somewhere said the word 'sanctuary'. I'm betting the deportation thing is 'circus and cake' for the rubes.
What will happen is the burrowing into our national fabric a corruption that we may never dislodge.
I think you're probably right. The people who fund the Republican party don't want deportation. They need the cheap and malleable labor.
They will deport a few criminals already in jail and talk it up on Fox.
That's not what happened last time.
Finance is the great draw--and will get you the highest paychecks.
Sure, you might get lucky at a start up. God knows we're awash in venture capital looking for the next big thing. But if you want to get the big money now, go into finance, e.g. banks, venture capital firms, etc. Have a STEM degree--then take a short programming course, and you're in. Or maybe go into a consulting company. Granted, Google (Alphabet), Meta, etc. do a lot of hiring too, but still only a small percent of graduating classes.
Americans can, and do, bounce around a bit between jobs. As mentioned, foreign nationals can not if they are going for a green card. And the major tech firms will have a lot of work done by contractors, i.e. the workers may work at a Google site, but are not employed by Google.
We do need to improve our education system. But people hate paying property taxes, especially when their taxes go to people making more money than they do. "Why should I have to work two jobs and have a gig on the side so a teacher can get the summer off???" As for college, "Why should I take a loan out to help my kid go to college when they'll just up and move away?"
What's really rich is that it is the Republicans that keep trying to defund gov't. schools and insisting that we teach that evolution isn't real. And now, their, at least the tech-bro side, justification seems to be that we're too dumb anyway. Nice.
Well, that's a stupid and ignorant comment by a stupid and ignorant person. My mother was a public health and then Navy nurse in the late 30s and up through the early 50s. In the mid-60s she became a teacher. She didn't get summers off. She got an MS and then PhD in special education and spent a lot of time taking courses to keep up to date with the certifications required by the state of Hawaii. And she had to pay out of her own pocket for the training.
I'm well aware of the plight of teachers (3 in the family). I've also heard comments made at school board meetings in places with not much money when raises for teachers are discussed.
There needs to be an overhaul in how schools are funded, especially when wealthy areas can "opt out", i.e. set up their own local school district. Teachers need to be respected too. Unfortunately one political party thrives on attacking teachers and their union.
Why should teachers get the summer off? Seems to me that enough students need intensive support to keep them busy all summer with summer school.
Musk famously fired thousands from Twitter. Why does he need engineers?
“The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has more than 130,000 job cuts across 457 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether.”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/24/tech-layoffs-2024-list/
Amid the downturn, why do they want more visas?
That's actually a good question.
the layoffs were done partly pour encourager les autres, and partly as a sacrifice to the irrational merciless gods of the stock market.
The indentured servant status of H1-B and discounted pay rates will always make them attractive labourers to the gilded few that run the company. Lay off independents and hire on H1-Bs at a 30-40% discount, always a winning proposition to those merciless gods.
Back in the 1990s when I progressed from H1-B to green card status, I moved from one tech-worker body shop to another, and my salary doubled. H1-B was still a reasonable deal I thought at the time, though back then it was only about 4 years at half-pay to get to a green card. Now it's ten years or more and I wouldn't do it under these conditions. Also there was always a great deal of fraud and abuse in the companies exploiting H1-Bs, we were just lucky to have a decent company.
The thing about Indian immigrants that makes them unique is that pretty much all of them are members of the Brahmin caste. Harris mother was a Brahmin. Ramaswami's heritage is Brahmin. Brahmins are the very worst people in India. They are supremacists. Only Indian Dalits should be allowed into the US.
Bigotry is still bigotry.
this is an important point much overlooked, though in my experience there are immigrants from all levels of the caste system, with admittedly a preponderance of Brahmins.
India's caste system is alive and well. Modi is an enthusiast. See for example,
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/indira-gandhi-long-undeclared-emergency/
To my small brain it is indistinguishable from apartheid, or any other system of institutionalized bigotry.
Companies I have consulted for had Brahmins and members of the scheduled castes and tribes (Dalits for short) at the same technical level. The Brahmins still treated the Dalits like servants. It was a shock to me. The Dalits were much pleasanter to work with. Like women in IT, they had to be much better than the average IT worker just to get the position, so they were reliably excellent at their job. As a bonus they were also usually unburdened by the arrogance of the average white guy/Brahmin type.
My gosh. These are the dumbest "smart" people ever (I'm referring to Musk and Ramaswamy).
Cribbed from a commenter here a few weeks ago:
"Being smart means being as aware of what you don't know as what you do know. By that standard, Musk is exceptionally stupid."
What Musk and his cohorts don't understand is that immigration and restricting to outright banning it is at heart of what the MAGA movement believes in and why it exists. An immigration policy that so many holes and exemptions in it is no policy, it's a doilie. They don't understand how hardline anti-immigrant people like Miller and his allies are and damn serious about their deportation plans are. Something has got to give.
Also understand why people like Musk and Kennedy hang around Trump and MAGA. Because normal political parties don't indulge freaks no give them any access to power
They want the exceptions because it means their exceptions are indebted to them.
Is that chart showing countries or ethnic groups? I mean, where it says China does that include Taiwan?
Leon was.shocked, SHOCKED!,to discover there was racism in the MAGA party.
"our choice is either to compete against them or have them compete for us against the rest of the world."
So we aim to steal the people whom India has educated in order to keep India down? Wouldn't the world be better off if India isn't kept in subjugation? Why can't the US educate its own citizens to do these jobs?
But actually the reason that Musk and other employers want to bring in immigrants, regardless of their political stance, is simply to keep their wage and salary costs down to increase their own profits. The immigrants are "better" in that they will accept the lower pay and longer hours. Of course this keeps overall wages down, and thus tends to keep GDP per capita down as the lower wages mean lower aggregate demand.
As usual discussion of immigration brings out remarkable hypocrisy and economic ignorance, on both sides. Although it is the Republican hypocrisy and racist opposition which keeps the issue to the fore. They consistently sabotage reasonable solutions which actually appear to be favored by the majority.
Elon Musk says school is useless,
https://i.redd.it/ne6je99uld9e1.jpeg
If you need a school you've lost already, sez Elon.
My two cents: the whole H1B "debate" is stupid, though I guess there's a certain pleasure in seeing that people like Musk who like a little nuance with their racism are finding it uncomfortable now they've discovered the racists they rallied to help elect Trump don't want any nuance at all.
The United States is a country, not a country club. For a stronger country and a better future, we should open our doors to those with the greatest needs, not just those with the greatest means.