Exceptional column. Just one quibble. From what I have read, Musk was never here on an H-1B visa. He violated the student visa he was here on when he dropped out of school and started working without an H-1B (per Ron Filipowski and I think Seth Abrams). Also from the great Seth Abrams, a Musk biographer, "I can't find a single component of the man's biography that he hasn't lied ruthlessly about."
Sherrilyn Ifill points out that this Musk v. MAGA squabble misses the main point about real or perceived deficiencies in the U.S. workforce: they can be traced directly to the gutting of U.S. public education in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, especially but by no means only in the South. She also notes the SCOTUS 1974 decision in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, upholding the use of property taxes to fund public education, because white flight to the suburbs left the burden on those least able to pay. Right-wing attacks on education continue apace, and right out in the open: witness the Project 2025 plan to abolish the Department of Education. And, as you note, racism is at the heart of this. Ifill's Substack is very worth reading: https://sherrilyn.substack.com/p/tell-vivek-the-call-is-coming-from.
All respect to Ifill, and a bit of personal history.
I worked on school reform in the Mississippi Delta in the 1990s and found destitution, so I checked into the quality of the lily-white schools parents had moved their kids into. An education researcher’s stats showed they were not much better.
A county I worked had a decent living wage per state/feds, but when looked into it, an average of one White millionaire raised all the poverty wages of the Blacks (and other Whites) living there.
This degradation is going to continue in Florida and other places in the South as the states move to defund education that means “not for those kids” as well as fixing the curriculum for white supremacy.
Interesting observation: Ramaswamy's insults to the American worker are exactly what the racist whites say about Black folks all the time. So how will the cult respond? It seems clear from these posts by the tech bros that they really have no interest in improving the education system so they can hire Americans, as the H1-B hires are so much easier to control and they work for peanuts compared to your average MIT grad.
They're too focused on their petty bigotries and hated of "Libburuls" to mount any effective response.
The Tech Bros, who see themselves as Global Techno-Libertarians bringing the technology paradise Fifties written SF promised them, would argue that race and country of origin matter less to them than "merit". It all sounds very fair-minded—only problem with that approach is (as Hollywood's repeated faceplants when it comes to "diversity" prove) that people in positions of power tend to hire people who....are just like them. (While I'm sure Matt Damon doesn't think of himself as bigoted in the least, he's so used to swimming with Straight White Scots-Irish people just like him and the Afflecks that he's always going to trust THEM over Black Women or Gay Men—and Damon at least has been forced to face his unexamined prejudices head-on thanks to the last season of PROJECT GREENLIGHT! )
Vivek Ramaswamy clearly thinks he got to where he is by "merit" alone, ignoring that most of us don't have parents who are Brahmin-caste doctors and lawyers who came here on whatever a H-1B visa was called back when they first emigrated, like his are. He has The Best Education Money Can Buy, going to a parochial high school and Harvard—if his parents had lived in a trailer park in Ohio with assembly-line jobs, he wouldn't have had those advantages (not being born in 1985, he wouldn't have!).
That's what the MAGAts fail to see in their leadership—all these guys think they're John Galt and Delos D. Harriman, and have nothing but contempt for "regular people". Of course, we're contemptuous of them, too, because they're IDIOTS!—but that's different.
"Indeed, Trump has few real policy commitments beyond self-aggrandizement and revenge." I would add financial gain to that list, which is why he's siding with Musk right now. It's also been interesting that I didn't see any Congressional Republicans get involved in this fight this past weekend. I wonder how they feel about non-elected people trying to set Federal policy.
This is NOT at all “entertaining”, even for a nanosecond. It’s just plain wrong and petrifying. We warned America if the coming dangers of electing T…p, yet here we are, at the precipice of a fascist republic with an unhinged, mentally unstable leader. History is repeating itself. We didn’t have to be here but for the racist and misogynistic hatred of a perfectly fine candidate. Voters need to coalesce and each of us in our own way fight like hell to redirect the course of history. It will not be easy. It will be confusing and painful. We must persevere.
“The Nazi compromises helped a limited number of people for a limited period of time. Obviously, though, they did not prevent the Holocaust. In fact, scholar Claudia Koonz argues that Hitler’s accommodation of Hindenburg and other critics may have helped the Nazis consolidate power in the long run.”
Agreed! I would also posit that Trump is not an ideologue, and just craves love and respect, since he clearly is an awful human being, with no venerable business acumen; so to speak! Not to mention, unlike Hitler, Trump has no plan for anything other than what he is told by handlers.
The real issue isn’t whether the two factions of MAGA will implode and Cannibalize itself; the Incel techbro’s versus the religious fascists: it’s a matter of when. They’re strange bedfellows on crack!…:)
Yes. I’ve read several credible reports that E Musk came to the US on a student visa. He, Peter Thiel & David Sachs are from S Africa—all influential in this Trump administration
One takeaway from all articles on the MAGA H1B war is that none of the authors appear to have much experience with that visa program. My spouse was an H1B who graduated Suma Cum in computer science from a US University, and within a few days, was offered an H1B job. I met my German BFF in grad school. He was a Nepo but after getting his MBA, he liked the idea of working in the US for a while to get a sense of how Americans do business. So, he applied for a job with a big company, got H1B’d, and within 2 years was their VP for international sales. He stuck around for a couple more years for the networking. While doing that, he fell in love, married a Yank, and moved back home to take over the family business, eventually tripling it in size.
Over the past 50 years, both socially and professionally, I have made numerous EU friends from Oslo to Sofia. So, my sense of the H1B world is at least informed. The stereotype that H1Bs are mediocre people working as indentured servants is not the norm in my experience. First of all, poor families cannot afford to send their kids to universities in foreign countries. As for foreign scholarship students, they have had to prove that they have above-average aptitudes to get a student visa.
Few businesses recruit H1Bs overseas as there are plenty of candidates already studying in US universities who are fluent in English and American culture by graduation time. A great many foreign students choose to stay stateside for a while after graduation for various reasons such as having an American girl/boyfriend or to get a better handle on how Americans do business before returning home to take over the family business or search for a job with an impressive resume’.
My sense is that many H1Bs become comfortable in their careers and eventually aim to explore staying permanently. That can be achieved by staying H1B for 6 years after which they can apply for a Green (permanent resident) card. In 5 more years, they are eligible for citizenship. Before those 11 years pass, as in my case, many wind up marrying a Yank and become citizens only 3 years later- or like my German BFF- they eventually return home. Thus, in most cases, H1Bs are only somewhat indentured as they may not change employers (H1Bs involve significant legal fees), but they are well-paid by US law, and they are building valuable career experience.
There wave after wave of outsourced IT staff (the people that run the networks, build the data centers, and do low level programming) is provided using companies like Tata Consulting, WiPro and others in India to replace entire slates of US born IT workers.
So much so that the bulk of the annual assignments of H1-B visas are snatched up by these companies in literal hours of opening the submission process, tilting the field.
And even if we did try to prevent this, then the outsourcing would be to teams in India.
While I am sure there are plenty of stories like you share, the bulk of the H1-B recipients are in IT, and they are there primarily to reduce the cost of employees.
The fact that Tesla had pages of openings for IT people at $70k salaries is also a damning piece of data.
Yes, Geoff, I have heard about India abuses, although I do not know anybody with exposure to them. It is widely known that India maintains sweatshops in-country. One does not need a visa for that. However, federal law requires that H1Bs are paid the same wage as their US co-workers doing the same work. How well that is enforced is hard to say. All the H1Bs I know were recruited from US universities right out of school.
Final thought, re Musk: Remember John DeLorean? He too made a novelty automobile, AND it was featured in three good movies. But today, he is the answer to a trivia question. All without the bigotry and name-calling.
But Musk & Trump, both are using their “power” in (the next) government to avoid criminal prosecution and prop up their various faltering businesses. X, Tesla, SpaceX—all three are mire stumbling than soaring.
Musk is crude and immature.. regardless of (or because of) being protected by his millions. Trump's transactionality is getting him in trouble. Trump has been winging it from day one. A lot of popcorn is popping now for the show.
This analysis is so good, so insightful ! Thank you Noah.
We should beware of ingesting the excuses and responses that the MAGAs serve for the scapegoating because it's in order to gain acquiescence, appeal again to latent racism, resentment and hatred. The (really blatant) contradictions, incoherence, keep surfacing from within.This is about class distinctions too. This takes a certain deafness out here as well to pass.
So some immigrants are okay.
In Nazi Germany some Jews were okay until they weren't; they were needed as scapegoats, needed to consolidate power. Whatever rationality, lies, what innate base of it that lay dormant, that worked, was used and played up. This is what Trump does. Trump has no principled basis other than his decrees and the misinformation/lies he spreads using ignorance to effect.
We are not supposed connect Musk, Melania and Ramaswamy's family members plus *many* others in MAGA to that group to be excluded including Blacks. They are players, loyalists, useful.
It is so tempting to be gleeful and hopeful of a self induced implosion when these idiots start to fight among themselves. But your last statement, "But these disagreements will not, in themselves, prevent the worst — even if watching the food fight is entertaining for a moment or two." keeps me in check ( a little)
Exceptional column. Just one quibble. From what I have read, Musk was never here on an H-1B visa. He violated the student visa he was here on when he dropped out of school and started working without an H-1B (per Ron Filipowski and I think Seth Abrams). Also from the great Seth Abrams, a Musk biographer, "I can't find a single component of the man's biography that he hasn't lied ruthlessly about."
Hi Becky -- thanks for the heads up about that. I changed that sentence to note that Musk's claims about having an H1-B are disputed.
Sherrilyn Ifill points out that this Musk v. MAGA squabble misses the main point about real or perceived deficiencies in the U.S. workforce: they can be traced directly to the gutting of U.S. public education in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, especially but by no means only in the South. She also notes the SCOTUS 1974 decision in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, upholding the use of property taxes to fund public education, because white flight to the suburbs left the burden on those least able to pay. Right-wing attacks on education continue apace, and right out in the open: witness the Project 2025 plan to abolish the Department of Education. And, as you note, racism is at the heart of this. Ifill's Substack is very worth reading: https://sherrilyn.substack.com/p/tell-vivek-the-call-is-coming-from.
All respect to Ifill, and a bit of personal history.
I worked on school reform in the Mississippi Delta in the 1990s and found destitution, so I checked into the quality of the lily-white schools parents had moved their kids into. An education researcher’s stats showed they were not much better.
A county I worked had a decent living wage per state/feds, but when looked into it, an average of one White millionaire raised all the poverty wages of the Blacks (and other Whites) living there.
This degradation is going to continue in Florida and other places in the South as the states move to defund education that means “not for those kids” as well as fixing the curriculum for white supremacy.
Interesting observation: Ramaswamy's insults to the American worker are exactly what the racist whites say about Black folks all the time. So how will the cult respond? It seems clear from these posts by the tech bros that they really have no interest in improving the education system so they can hire Americans, as the H1-B hires are so much easier to control and they work for peanuts compared to your average MIT grad.
They're too focused on their petty bigotries and hated of "Libburuls" to mount any effective response.
The Tech Bros, who see themselves as Global Techno-Libertarians bringing the technology paradise Fifties written SF promised them, would argue that race and country of origin matter less to them than "merit". It all sounds very fair-minded—only problem with that approach is (as Hollywood's repeated faceplants when it comes to "diversity" prove) that people in positions of power tend to hire people who....are just like them. (While I'm sure Matt Damon doesn't think of himself as bigoted in the least, he's so used to swimming with Straight White Scots-Irish people just like him and the Afflecks that he's always going to trust THEM over Black Women or Gay Men—and Damon at least has been forced to face his unexamined prejudices head-on thanks to the last season of PROJECT GREENLIGHT! )
Vivek Ramaswamy clearly thinks he got to where he is by "merit" alone, ignoring that most of us don't have parents who are Brahmin-caste doctors and lawyers who came here on whatever a H-1B visa was called back when they first emigrated, like his are. He has The Best Education Money Can Buy, going to a parochial high school and Harvard—if his parents had lived in a trailer park in Ohio with assembly-line jobs, he wouldn't have had those advantages (not being born in 1985, he wouldn't have!).
That's what the MAGAts fail to see in their leadership—all these guys think they're John Galt and Delos D. Harriman, and have nothing but contempt for "regular people". Of course, we're contemptuous of them, too, because they're IDIOTS!—but that's different.
It just is.... 😇
"Indeed, Trump has few real policy commitments beyond self-aggrandizement and revenge." I would add financial gain to that list, which is why he's siding with Musk right now. It's also been interesting that I didn't see any Congressional Republicans get involved in this fight this past weekend. I wonder how they feel about non-elected people trying to set Federal policy.
Yes! Mo’ money, revenge & profit—these push our Billionaire Boys Club, not ideology or policy.
This is NOT at all “entertaining”, even for a nanosecond. It’s just plain wrong and petrifying. We warned America if the coming dangers of electing T…p, yet here we are, at the precipice of a fascist republic with an unhinged, mentally unstable leader. History is repeating itself. We didn’t have to be here but for the racist and misogynistic hatred of a perfectly fine candidate. Voters need to coalesce and each of us in our own way fight like hell to redirect the course of history. It will not be easy. It will be confusing and painful. We must persevere.
Harris would have been more than perfectly fine! She would have been great!
“The Nazi compromises helped a limited number of people for a limited period of time. Obviously, though, they did not prevent the Holocaust. In fact, scholar Claudia Koonz argues that Hitler’s accommodation of Hindenburg and other critics may have helped the Nazis consolidate power in the long run.”
Agreed! I would also posit that Trump is not an ideologue, and just craves love and respect, since he clearly is an awful human being, with no venerable business acumen; so to speak! Not to mention, unlike Hitler, Trump has no plan for anything other than what he is told by handlers.
The real issue isn’t whether the two factions of MAGA will implode and Cannibalize itself; the Incel techbro’s versus the religious fascists: it’s a matter of when. They’re strange bedfellows on crack!…:)
Yes. I’ve read several credible reports that E Musk came to the US on a student visa. He, Peter Thiel & David Sachs are from S Africa—all influential in this Trump administration
Ah, South Africa—time to revisit the apartheid policies and militancy of the Boers! ‘Twasn’t a pretty picture.
I believe Thiel is originally from Germany.
"We can continue to highlight his regime’s racism and cruelty."
Check out these three DemLabs interactive infographics on this issue:
Trump flip flops on immigration to side with H1B employers against MAGA base: Follow the money
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/12/28/trump-flip-flops-on-immigration-to-side-with-h1b-employers-against-maga-base-follow-the-money/
EXPOSED: Musk’s scheme to hire more H1B workers by closing American public schools
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/12/29/musk-scheme-to-hire-more-h1b-workers-by-closing-american-public-schools/
How to exploit workers: Insider’s step-by-step guide
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/12/29/how-to-exploit-workers-h1b-prison-labor-undocumented-workers-gig-workers/
Musk & Trump, proof positive that bales of money brings neither smarts nor class. Like the old trope of being born on third base.
Also, I think it’s Stevie Miller who wins the Goebbels comparison, not Bannon.
The "distracting food fight".
The next four years will be loaded with contradictions, hypocrisy, and clickbait.
It is the phony "reality show".
I look forward to more nuanced analysis from Aaron, Noah, and the crowd over at The Bulwark.
Fingers crossed the total implosion happens real soon. Don't make us wait, you morons.
One takeaway from all articles on the MAGA H1B war is that none of the authors appear to have much experience with that visa program. My spouse was an H1B who graduated Suma Cum in computer science from a US University, and within a few days, was offered an H1B job. I met my German BFF in grad school. He was a Nepo but after getting his MBA, he liked the idea of working in the US for a while to get a sense of how Americans do business. So, he applied for a job with a big company, got H1B’d, and within 2 years was their VP for international sales. He stuck around for a couple more years for the networking. While doing that, he fell in love, married a Yank, and moved back home to take over the family business, eventually tripling it in size.
Over the past 50 years, both socially and professionally, I have made numerous EU friends from Oslo to Sofia. So, my sense of the H1B world is at least informed. The stereotype that H1Bs are mediocre people working as indentured servants is not the norm in my experience. First of all, poor families cannot afford to send their kids to universities in foreign countries. As for foreign scholarship students, they have had to prove that they have above-average aptitudes to get a student visa.
Few businesses recruit H1Bs overseas as there are plenty of candidates already studying in US universities who are fluent in English and American culture by graduation time. A great many foreign students choose to stay stateside for a while after graduation for various reasons such as having an American girl/boyfriend or to get a better handle on how Americans do business before returning home to take over the family business or search for a job with an impressive resume’.
My sense is that many H1Bs become comfortable in their careers and eventually aim to explore staying permanently. That can be achieved by staying H1B for 6 years after which they can apply for a Green (permanent resident) card. In 5 more years, they are eligible for citizenship. Before those 11 years pass, as in my case, many wind up marrying a Yank and become citizens only 3 years later- or like my German BFF- they eventually return home. Thus, in most cases, H1Bs are only somewhat indentured as they may not change employers (H1Bs involve significant legal fees), but they are well-paid by US law, and they are building valuable career experience.
I will counter this with my experience in IT.
There wave after wave of outsourced IT staff (the people that run the networks, build the data centers, and do low level programming) is provided using companies like Tata Consulting, WiPro and others in India to replace entire slates of US born IT workers.
So much so that the bulk of the annual assignments of H1-B visas are snatched up by these companies in literal hours of opening the submission process, tilting the field.
And even if we did try to prevent this, then the outsourcing would be to teams in India.
While I am sure there are plenty of stories like you share, the bulk of the H1-B recipients are in IT, and they are there primarily to reduce the cost of employees.
The fact that Tesla had pages of openings for IT people at $70k salaries is also a damning piece of data.
Yes, Geoff, I have heard about India abuses, although I do not know anybody with exposure to them. It is widely known that India maintains sweatshops in-country. One does not need a visa for that. However, federal law requires that H1Bs are paid the same wage as their US co-workers doing the same work. How well that is enforced is hard to say. All the H1Bs I know were recruited from US universities right out of school.
Thanks Tom, really appreciate your perspective -- this is informative and interesting stuff.
Final thought, re Musk: Remember John DeLorean? He too made a novelty automobile, AND it was featured in three good movies. But today, he is the answer to a trivia question. All without the bigotry and name-calling.
But Musk & Trump, both are using their “power” in (the next) government to avoid criminal prosecution and prop up their various faltering businesses. X, Tesla, SpaceX—all three are mire stumbling than soaring.
Musk is crude and immature.. regardless of (or because of) being protected by his millions. Trump's transactionality is getting him in trouble. Trump has been winging it from day one. A lot of popcorn is popping now for the show.
This analysis is so good, so insightful ! Thank you Noah.
We should beware of ingesting the excuses and responses that the MAGAs serve for the scapegoating because it's in order to gain acquiescence, appeal again to latent racism, resentment and hatred. The (really blatant) contradictions, incoherence, keep surfacing from within.This is about class distinctions too. This takes a certain deafness out here as well to pass.
So some immigrants are okay.
In Nazi Germany some Jews were okay until they weren't; they were needed as scapegoats, needed to consolidate power. Whatever rationality, lies, what innate base of it that lay dormant, that worked, was used and played up. This is what Trump does. Trump has no principled basis other than his decrees and the misinformation/lies he spreads using ignorance to effect.
We are not supposed connect Musk, Melania and Ramaswamy's family members plus *many* others in MAGA to that group to be excluded including Blacks. They are players, loyalists, useful.
Biden, by the way had been trying to get support for students access to higher education through student loan forgiveness. He ran into opposition from the SCOTUS and principally red states. MAGA( Trump) loves the uneducated!. https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/biden-administration-proposes-rule-to-amend-higher-education-act-as-part-of-latest-effort-to-tackle-student-loan-debt/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/29/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-actions-to-promote-educational-opportunity-and-diversity-in-colleges-and-universities/
It is so tempting to be gleeful and hopeful of a self induced implosion when these idiots start to fight among themselves. But your last statement, "But these disagreements will not, in themselves, prevent the worst — even if watching the food fight is entertaining for a moment or two." keeps me in check ( a little)