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."
Tech bros: “There’s a shortage of talent. We need more workers! More H-1Bs!”
Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley: “My perfect GPA students are contacting me worried because they are getting zero job offers.” pic.twitter.com/iF7iKXPppk— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) December 27, 2024
Thread, won.
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.
Engineers are different. You can’t teach somebody to be an engineer. That’s something your born with. Not everybody can stop a nuclear meltdown with chocolate and duct tape.
Tech bros: “There’s a shortage of talent. We need more workers! More H-1Bs!”
Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley: “My perfect GPA students are contacting me worried because they are getting zero job offers.” pic.twitter.com/iF7iKXPppk— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) December 27, 2024
No they don’t.
Indian IQ is 87 range.
Troll.
Tech bros: “There’s a shortage of talent. We need more workers! More H-1Bs!”
Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley: “My perfect GPA students are contacting me worried because they are getting zero job offers.” pic.twitter.com/iF7iKXPppk— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) December 27, 2024
The unemployment rate for US citizens with engineering degrees is about 2%.
Because the USA is so big, there are in sheer numbers, a lot of very talented home grown people available for hire. On a percentage basis, it is not so big.
And smart people aren't stupid, LOL. If you are an A- type male from rural Kansas, why would you go to engineering school nowadays anyway? You have to compete against foreign talent and weave your way through feminized HR departments. There is more money to be made elsewhere with that kind of brain power. Get into finance. Go be a RN. Or get into the trades and run your own business.
How can low quality & low IQ H1-B workers replace high quality American workers, and the corporation is still in business?
Either the jobs did not require high IQ workers or the H1-B workers are smart enough to carry on company needs.
Vivek is talking about white people and their culture the way white people routinely talk about black people and their culture.
Why can’t y’all be more like the Asians? 😉
“Vivek getting curb stomped by Nikki, LOL. I know Nikki doesn’t mean it,”
They are different castes. He was a Brahmin, and she was a Sihk I think.
And the way Indians bring that old world crap here is something else I don’t like. This last election we had Nimrata Haley, Ramaswami, and Harris. Time to wake up, America has an third world immigration problem. If we don’t stop it hard, we will look like England in less than a decade.
I'd argue that 100% of the jobs that you referred to are already well-established and yes, people can learn them on the job.
The problem is who is going to think up the next generation of jobs of the future that has no installed basis to slot "the average person" into?
If our elite universities like Harvard had to fire their presidents for faking their credentials, then what can we realistically expect of the students who graduated from such schools?
-PJ
Like Ralph Earnhardt said to Dale:
"They can't put it in you and they can't take it out."
What’s your source for those numbers?
I respect that you take a contrary view on these pages. It's healthy for debate.
In some superficial ways, Vivek is correct. SOCIALISM and materialism, and the appalling lack of opportunity and desperation it creates in Chinese and Indian societies funnels a lot of people into STEM. There are intelligent people available for what Americans consider slave wages.
But MAGA is supposed to PROTECT average Americans, and their lifestyle. We must NOT agree to be sold out to the lowest globalist bidder.
Moreover, its proven that H1B program is just another grift, where a few cronies and insiders organizing it make huge amounts of money.
IF There is a problem with Americans education or expectations, then blame our bloated, debt-fed education and welfare system. FIX THAT FIRST, before stabbing American workers in the back in the name of economic efficiency.
They are on student visas. That’s not immigrant. That’s student. The Indian and Chinese students outscore caucasian.
The Bell Curve.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote
I graduated many years ago obtaining a Ph.D. in engineering from the #1 engineering school in the the US. I am a legal immigrant coming as an adult. My efforts in Silicon Valley span 36 years, and those efforts have created about 5500 jobs worldwide, the vast majority of which are in the US, most paying north of $130k annually. I have also hired many dozens of engineers, a handful of them being H1Bs. My experience is that engineers come in all levels of talent, from all the larger cultures (American, Japanese, Indian, Chinese, European). The main differentiating factor is how much their spouses will allow the engineer to work, including weekends. In my experience, American engineers, once married to an American woman, have to take care of home chores much more than American engineers married to a foreign born Asian woman. I have often seen married Indian and Chinese engineers slamming the phone down, or ignoring texts from their spouse if they stay past 9 PM. It takes a certain amount of craziness to push past the limits, Elon does it, I have done it, many American engineers have done it, but it requires a cooperating spouse.
“India becomes the biggest source country for doctors in the US”
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