Posted on 12/28/2024 6:39:57 PM PST by conservative98
There’s a raging debate on X right now about H1B visas and Vivek Ramaswamy is getting slammed for suggesting American culture is bad and thus can’t product high level talent that top tech companies want.
Let’s start back from the beginning:
THE HILL – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairs of President-elect Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” are defending the tech industry’s reliance on foreign-born engineers as the incoming Trump administration prepares to crack down on immigration.
Musk and Ramaswamy both pointed to a lack of engineers stateside.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday post on his social platform X.
When another user suggested the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was denying opportunities to Americans, Musk argued that the poster’s understanding of the situation was “upside-down and backwards.”
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” the tech billionaire said. “HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
This is where Ramaswamy steps into it, blaming tv shows that promote ‘mediocrity’ on a culture that can’t product top talent:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
This didn’t go over well with everyone…
Even Nikki Haley chimed in, saying there is nothing wrong with American culture…
The press secretary for DeSantis also suggested the problem isn’t American culture, but mass immigration and quoted Governor DeSantis:
Vivek isn’t wrong that we have a problem with American culture but it’s not what he suggests. It isn’t TV shows and movies that produce mediocrity. No, this has a lot to do with the breakdown of the family, with the inability or unwillingness of parents to push their children to excel academically instead of endlessly playing video games or sitting in front of a TV. Also many of our schools have big problems producing excellence as well. But I think it all starts with the breakdown of the family, ie. fatherless children and single mothers working multiple jobs to make ends meet while their children are at home doing whatever they want. And this is a product of the Godless left.
But that being said, I don’t know how much that really plays into this problem of top-level talent. It may have some effect, but I also agree with fact that mass immigration is a big culprit, in that it provides the cheap labor that companies want. This is a battle we’ve been fighting for decades, not just against the left, but against the Chamber of Commerce types in the Republican party for decades who want the left’s version of immigration so they can reap the benefits of cheap labor.
Look, I have never disagreed with merit-based immigration, especially when it comes to top level talent. We want the best and the brightest no matter where they are from as long as they are willing to assimilate. But we want it on our terms.
Let me quote the Great Mark Levin from over a decade ago:
"And what do we the people want? We want our border secured. And let me go even further. Let me make it absolutely clear to every foreigner outside this country.
This country belongs to us; it doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to the 7 billion other people all over the world.
You see the way it’s supposed to work is we decide who gets to come here. We decide the standards. We decide the requirements. We want to know who you are. We want to know what you’re going to – (ready for this one?) – contribute to this society, not take from this society.
You see because I want to make it very very clear to the left, to the media and even some ‘Repubicans’ and even some TV and radio hosts.
There’s nothing compassionate about the downfall of America! There’s nothing compassionate about the hollowing out of our society! There’s nothing compassionate about bankrupting our children and grandchildren, destroying our school system, destroying local law enforcement and hospitals, what’s been built up over 200 years.
It’s one thing to export our viewpoints, our economic ideas, our governing ideas. But it’s quite another to import the views, the culture and the destitution of the third world. Because that is national suicide. And any thinking person who is not playing politics, who’s not a demagogue, who’s not a propagandist, any thinking person regardless of party, ethnicity, or anything else knows I’m right!
This isn’t about voting as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t about pandering to this group or that group as far as I’m concerned. This is about preserving what’s left of this Republic."
He’s right about our rotten culture and its educational system; but the remedy is to change it for the better, not to surrender to it and replace it with foreign workers.....
but what is the solution in the interim?
Yes, I speak from personal experience.
Viveks example of America’s valuation of the Superficial, Cheerleaders, and Jocks, above the intellectually gifted is well documented. It’s an undeniable FACT!
The Asian Culture is the EXACT OPPOSITE. Asian parents stress educational accomplishment above all else. Their culture is all about EDUCATIONAL ACHEIEVEMENT. Period. Anything else above that is BONUS!
No it’s not. To be an engineer and be good at it is not easy.
Being trained as an engineer teaches you how to think. That is NOT a common skill.
He has a big mouth and a condescending attitude towards America. I and American citizens owe the Filipina nothing but contempt.
BLS
Einstein was german also
All tech is an international collaboration.
Tech is transferred, in the main, by copycats looking at what the other guys manage to do. And then the most successful build on that.
Von Braun and team brought in the much-developed liquid rocket tech, which was way further along than Goddards. The first US space rockets were war booty V2’s, then variants on V2’s.
Thats why you now see the Chinese copycatting the Muskian rocket system (Its a system, that begins with the rocket as a production-engineered item).
The local nativists on FR have no idea about the churn of tech. They are just about feelings.
I hope you are not conflating working from home with a lack of work ethic.
You do realize that most Americans have German ancestry, right? Did you notice that they are/were European?
“That is fiction. American engineers did the huge majority of the work. Von Braun was a program leader. The MAIN goal of bringing nazi rocket scientists was to keep them from the Soviets. American scientists of that era are slandered far too much.”
GMAB! Von Braun was the catalyst. The driving force. Twice. Both in NAZI Germany and in the USA. It’s his genius that is the reason he was so prized. To deny this is to deny factual history.
Does it say how many are under employed or not employed in their field?
absolutely I am. And I know Trump agrees with me and plans to fire most federal workers who refuse to return to work.
You can’t make America great again with workers who refuse to show up to work.
Either help make America great again, or get the hell out of the way.
Have a buddy in IT. He echoes this.
Universities have always welcomed foreign students who will pay full rack rate tuition.
You speak of Asians having a higher IQ than Americans. I rather thought that across populations, roughly the same percentages will follow the IQ bell curve. However, there are many more Asians than Americans. Thus, the gene pool is simply larger, producing more people with higher, mid-range and lower IQ.
Couldn’t the Pubbies at least wait until AFTER the 20th to shoot themselves in their feet?
Von Braun and the V2 are exactly what kicked off the US space program.
And Musk IS the current US space program. Nobody else is, realistically, anywhere near SpaceX. Sometime next year Starship is going to start regularly launching 200 tons to LEO, which is going to be a world-historical event.
I think that is shifting the goal posts once the original argument is defeated. Let’s focus on the original argument, which is that engineers from top tier US universities are losing out to H1Bs, and that is simply not true.
Dude is a complete fraud and con man… Trump and Elon have to know this… wonder if this whole H1B fiasco was just a honeypot to trap him so they can dump him…
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