The Debate Over the Place of Immigrants and H1-B Visas in America’s Future
Over the 2024 Christmas holiday, a furious debate raged on X.com over the status of “highly skilled” immigrants (mostly Indian immigrants) and U.S. policy regarding H-1B visas given to talented and educated immigrants seeking skilled work in American industries.
The Controversy
The controversy began when Laura Loomer got into a spat with “Sidharth,” a self-described “High skilled Indian immigrant.” The back-and-forth soon led to a discussion of the H-1B visa program, which resulted in Loomer declaring that anyone who supports removing the caps on the visas (i.e., how many are allowed in each year under the program) “truly hate[s] [their] fellow American worker.” Subsequently, Loomer lost her blue check status, which Musk attributed to accounts that were coordinating in spam posting.
A general debate over high-skilled immigration, the dearth of high-skilled labor in science and engineering fields, and the wisdom and utility of the H-1B program then commenced. Vivek Ramaswamy wrote a long thread explaining why tech companies generally default to hiring foreign-born over American-born engineers, blaming the decline in American culture that now extols mediocrity as the main problem. Musk weighed in, declaring that the problem was a fundamental shortage of “excellent engineering talent” that was holding Silicon Valley back. Musk argued that America needs more than 300,000 new engineers by 2032, and that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” He attributed Tesla, SpaceX, and many other successful businesses to the H-1B program, which Musk himself benefited from.
Analogizing America to a sports team, Musk asserted that America’s greatness over the past 150 years is due to her meritocracy that rewards the native-born and foreign-born alike without showing favoritism. When he received pushback from those who argued that Musk should prioritize hiring American engineers, Musk replied that he was only talking about the top ~0.1% of engineering talent, and that repurposing American engineers whose education is subpar and who have been funneled through useless American government programs or managed under failed business practices is particularly difficult. In general, Musk is driven by his need to win, which is the number one motivating factor behind his long-term support for legal immigration.
The H-1B Program
Throughout the debate, the H-1B program that allows high-skilled non-citizen immigrants entrance into the country under a worker visa was under intense scrutiny and debate. The H-1B program was created in 1990 under the Immigration Act of 1990. Its predecessor was the H-1 program from the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Section 101(a)(15) of that law classified a whole range of so-called “nonimmigrant aliens” who were generally exempt from the law’s specifications regarding immigrants. Section (H)(i)-(iii) of 101(a)(15) is what concerns us:
an alien having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning (i) who is of distinguished merit and ability and who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform temporary services of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability; or (ii) who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform other temporary services or labor, if unemployed persons capable of performing such service or labor cannot be found in this country; or (iii) who is coming temporarily to the United States as an industrial trainee.
Visas for high-skilled non-citizen immigrants of “distinguished merit and ability” were subsequently handed out in ever-increasing numbers, many to immigrants who weren’t vital to the U.S. economy or who could hardly be considered “high-skilled.” In 1990, Representative Bruce Morrison (D-CT) helped author the 1990 Immigration Act that revised the H-1 program as the H-1A (for nurses) and H-1B (for all other specialties), placing a cap of 65,000 annually on H-1B visas and limiting those workers to a maximum six-year residency (see Section 205(a)). The H-1B program was later revised again in 1998 and 2000.
Although the intention behind the program and its numerous reforms and revisions were perhaps noble and well-meaning, the program was rife with abuse from the very beginning. In 1993, CBS 60 Minutes devoted an entire segment to how U.S. computer companies were purposely firing Americans in order to hire foreign workers under the H-1B program for lower salaries. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that the H-1B program suppresses U.S. tech wages, and a few years later, the Economic Policy Institute exposed the illegality and wage theft endemic within the program. Even the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website devotes an entire page to combatting fraud and abuse in the H-1B program. However, perhaps the most revealing piece of journalism came from Eric Weinstein, who dug behind the ubiquitous claims of “long-term labor shortages” to show that the very “studies” meant to justify the H-1 and H-1B programs were fraudulent from the beginning. In short, American tech businesses in search of ever-greater profits and reduction of overhead do not want to hire the more expensive American worker, and so have relentlessly pushed for special work visas for supposedly “high-skilled” foreign immigrants who conveniently serve as an ever-rotating but permanently underpaid indentured servant class.
More than abuse of the program, however, what seems to upset most Americans is the existence of the program itself: that non-citizen foreigners are being given jobs that could be awarded to American citizens. Why cannot these immigrants return to their countries to make them better? Or, as Steve Bannon suggested, why not require an exit visa for every foreign student admitted to the country? What nation in its right mind, that has the welfare and goodwill of its citizens as its overriding responsibility, purposely grants high-paying and high-skilled jobs to temporary non-citizen immigrants who will then play a prominent role in shaping the direction and culture of the country? The program itself is illegitimate and cannot be reformed; it should be eliminated. This does not mean we cannot allow or favor skilled immigrants in our immigration policy, for this is what historic American immigration policy has long emphasized in its championing of character and industriousness over licentiousness and sloth. The presence and persistence of the H-1B program, however, points to more troubling matters.
The Real Issues
The problems surrounding the H-1B program notwithstanding, there are deeper and more troubling realities that the immigrant visa program reveals. First is the unrelenting search by large national and multinational corporations to find cheap labor, either at home or imported from abroad. Whether we’re talking about “skilled labor” of foreign nationals with PhDs or engineering degrees, or unskilled migrants picking fruit fields, immigrants are easily taken advantage of as U.S. corporations can exempt them from U.S. labor regulations or exploit loopholes in immigration law. Either way, a class of indentured servant migrant workers has arisen in America—some here legally, others illegally—that not only exploits immigrants but American workers as well who are boxed out of jobs they would otherwise fill or who must settle for lower wages. The H-1B visa program is merely the upper-class antipode of the lower-class illegal immigrant employment scandal. Both reflect labor rot in American hiring and worker treatment practices.
Second, the H-1B visa program is a small part of a sprawling and disastrous patchwork of immigration policies since the 1950s that have completely transformed American culture, industry, and demographics. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) eliminated the ethnic component of American immigration policy that had been present since the 1790s, and even though it retained a quota system for foreign nationals, it emphasized and liberalized labor qualifications by striking the restriction on contract labor and introducing preferences for economically skilled and educated immigrants. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act), signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of a slew of Civil Rights legislation riding the wave of so-called anti-discrimination movements, is best known for doing away with the traditional quota system. That system had been extremely effective in preserving historic American culture and social homogeneity: the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 had resulted in 99% of all immigrants to America coming from Europe (and only 0.3% from Asia), the Immigration Act of 1924 averaged 98% of immigrants from Europe between 1924-1952, and the 1952 Act maintained a 94% preference for Europeans until 1965.
These three acts were prompted by the uncontrolled growth of immigrants in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, in which the total share of immigrant population in the United States reached 15%. But by 1970, due to quota restrictions and decreases in overall immigration, this had dipped to below 5%. The 1965 immigration act reversed these trends. By banning quotas, the Hart-Celler Act threw open the floodgates to global immigration for the first time in American history. In 1965 when the law was passed, 89% of Americans were “White” and could trace their ancestry to England or Europe; by 2000, that had dipped to 75% and Hispanics outnumbered Black Americans for the first time (over 35 million, or 12.5% of the population). Today, Whites only make up 58% of the U.S. population, while Hispanics have ballooned to 19%.
These massive demographic changes in just two generations have completely transformed the country by introducing people and cultures not previously present in America. Indian immigrants from India numbered only a few hundred thousand prior to 2000, but in the past twenty-five years, almost 3 million have immigrated to the United States, making them the second largest foreign-born population in the country (at 6%) behind Hispanics (out of 47.8 million total foreign-born residents in 2023). Constantly touted as being “highly skilled,” well-educated, and high-income earners, Indian immigrants received almost two-thirds of the H-1B worker visas in 2023. Not only this, but illegal Indian immigration has jumped to almost 100,000 a year, half of these coming through the U.S.-Canadian border.
These incoherent and irresponsible immigration policies have left Americans feeling like strangers in their own homeland: useless and wildly expensive college degrees have left many unable to secure adequate employment in competition with non-citizen immigrant residents, non-American ethnic enclaves have increased where Americans cannot even be understood in their own language, certain industries have become dominated by inbred and nepotistic immigrant blocs (such as Indians at gas stations or banks), and in some areas, real estate has been purposely bought up and reserved for ethnic subcultures, virtually assuring that these immigrants will not assimilate but will recreate their birth country in America.
A third major problem is that America’s labor and immigration practices reflect America’s standing as the global and imperial hegemon over the Liberal International Order (often colloquially referred to as the Global American Empire, or GAE). As one observant X.com user noted, if America were simply trying to be its own country, attuned to the needs and traditions of its own people, then it would not require a global workforce of the highest skilled brought over by business enticements and educated at elite American universities. In short, America is no longer a country or a nation; she has been reduced to a pitiful and impoverished Economic Zone. In this scenario, the commercial and economic dimensions of national and international relations overtake and cannibalize the political, social, and traditional ties and ways of life.
Scholars of American history and political thought have long emphasized the fact that, in many ways, America was founded as a commercial republic. Yet even so, the economic nationalism of the original American System (the outlines of which were the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton) subsumed economic activity to political constitutionalism, national character, and the preservation of unique localities and distinctive state governance. This healthy balance (prioritizing the political and historical identity of Americans while encouraging economic industry and growth) was eventually reversed, with the final pivot point occurring after America emerged as the sole Western victor and superpower post WWII. Today we have become accustomed to endless talk of American prosperity and progress defined according to GDP and living standards. Economic conditions regularly drive voters and political activity more than any other single issue.
If America is merely a Liberal Economic Zone, then citizenship is meaningless. Citizens who have historic ties to a land and place, with unique political rights and privileges, and who seek to intentionally preserve their national language, religion, and legal culture, are quickly belittled as prejudiced and racist, and are made to feel guilty for favoring their own people over foreigners. The goal is to reduce citizens to economic serfs as interchangeable units who can work anywhere in the global economy. On this assumption, a high-IQ Indian is more valuable as an economic unit and productivity statistic to high-tech Silicon Valley start-ups and billionaires than even the smartest American workers who are regularly smeared as being “retarded” and “stupid.” It is unsurprising that the redefinition of America as a global commercial hub has gone hand-in-glove with the belief in America as just an idea, a “propositional nation,” that is open to all who merely mouth the right beliefs. The conflict over national identity with the MAGA camp is illustrated in the contrary statements by J. D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy: Vance famously declared that America is not merely an idea and he has stood resolutely by American workers, while Ramaswamy brazenly asserted that “America isn’t a place.”
If America isn’t a place with a land and history to call her own, then she is a borderless waystation for the world’s immigrants to come and go as they please. She is a wax nose in the hands of progressive social engineers who will use the Great Replacement to craft the wealthy utopia they desire. The original American stock, Heritage Americans, who resist these deracinating and colonial schemes, must be reconditioned, and if they won’t submit to the new global ordering, they are left behind to die from unemployment and debt, depression and mental disorders, or opioid overdoses. In this light, resistance to the H-1B program and its eventual demise is symbolic of recovering America as a nation and people, and bringing to an end her ill-spent 80-year dominance as an imperial global force.
Fourth and finally, the fight over H-1B visas reveals the huge gap between the rank-and-file MAGA faithful, and the tech gurus and billionaires over what national life is all about. Musk has repeatedly and very insistently proclaimed that America must “WIN” and that winning requires the best talent—in other words, using H-1B visas to hire foreign national geniuses in STEM fields who can advance Musk’s engineering projects in electric cars, robotic development, and space flight. No one belittles Musk for wanting to achieve and win. The question is, what does winning mean? Does “winning” mean beating China in tech fields or India in the best engineering degrees? Does it mean leading the world in STEM scores or producing the first fully autonomous robotic taxis? What does this say about American education when science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are prioritized over grammar, logic, and the humanities in general?
The aspirations of Elon Musk may not all be good for America, and they may not align with what most Americans want for their country. When Musk wins, America and her people may actually lose. Musk knows little about American history and her cherished traditions. He constantly invokes the First Amendment and the freedom of speech, positing himself as a defender of both against the “woke mind virus” and the Left’s censorship regime, yet his understanding of American constitutionalism is paltry and thin. In short, Musk views American constitutional guarantees as procedural rights: the right for him to say whatever he wants, to amass private wealth and property to be used for his own venture capital exploits, and for him to pursue his own life goals as his definition of happiness and fulfillment. Thus, America for Musk is not a place or a homeland, but merely a launchpad for his own personal ambitions. This makes perfect sense, as Musk is the stereotypical “high-skilled” immigrant who came to America on an H-1B visa and made a name for himself in the California tech bubble through strategic investments and a zealous (and unhealthy) work ethic.
Conclusion
That this immigrant brouhaha occurred over Christmas was not lost on some people. Christmas is a Christian holiday, and the West, more than any other civilization, has been made by Christianity. That immigrants from non-Christian countries and secular businessmen on the tech right care little about the religious essence of the holiday and have provoked a reaction is not surprising. We should expect that traditional American holidays that reflect our Christian and Anglo heritage will become battlegrounds in the contest over the soul of America among the disparate groups now populating the country. It is a sad commentary on the state of America that this was the focus at Christmas time instead of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Image Credit: Unsplash
