Posted on 09/29/2025 8:02:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Elon Musk wants H-1B visas because he says America needs more tech workers. The real reason for these visas is our schools aren’t teaching math well enough.
By law, H-1B visas go to foreigners who do specialized jobs, mostly in tech. Every year, 65,000 regular visas are handed out, plus 20,000 for advanced degrees. A 2023 federal report showed 65% of H-1B jobs are computer-related, but less than 1% go to social sciences.
America’s math problem is getting worse. In 2024, a staggering 72% of eighth-graders failed to score at the proficient level in math, which is up from 66% in 2019.
Why is this happening? Math teaching isn’t working.
When Common Core standards came out, they promised to fix math education. They haven’t worked. Kids are told to draw pictures or shade rectangles instead of just memorizing basic math facts.
A California math tutor named Michael Malione says kids spend too much time drawing and not enough just solving problems.
“We’re going to draw a picture every time we’re given 10 problems with fractional multiplication, when you could do them in your head? That’s insane.”
Malione sees students struggling without clear guidance.
A federal study found Common Core actually hurt kids’ math scores. College math teachers see new students struggle with even basic algebra, saying, “we’re not producing the kinds of students and graduates that Silicon Valley needs.”
Sugi Sorensen, an engineer at Jet Propulsion Lab and math tutor, says we need to get back to old-fashioned basics:
“the memorization of math facts and procedures”
and a careful, step-by-step approach. She says this makes kids accurate and confident in math.
Sorensen also wants schools to stick with orderly lessons, so new skills build on the old ones. Long division and other operations need to be practiced until kids master them.
America’s schools serve nearly 50 million K-12 kids. If we go back to what works in math class, our companies wouldn’t have to rely on foreign talent. We’d have plenty of smart, job-ready young people here at home.
Let’s make school math strong again, so America leads and our workers fill good jobs.
Families in the heartland know the power of old-fashioned learning—hard work and basics first. When our schools focus on strong math, our kids can grab good opportunities without being shoved aside by broken systems. That’s how we build a future for all of us right here at home.
It is a Catch 22.
The cheap imports are decreasing wages and job openings.
So why study hard subjects if you are for nothing, but punishment?
So there are not that many US graduates, so more imports are needed, which then decrease the US students desirability of these subjects.
The only solution is to cut the knot!
Just stop or highly reduce H1B for some time, until real shortages develop and US kids notice that these subjects are really good to study!
I think, the $100,000 is good start! If some company really needs somebody, they will gladly pay.
If not, that person is obviously not that needed!
Fix the education system instead of hiring foreign workers.
Use Saxon Math for one thing and get away from Common Core crap.
Sorry, but this excuse just doesn’t fly!
Ther are plenty of American tech workers sitting on the side-lines because the H1-Bs work for less and the majority of tech contracting agencies are run by Indians (re: racism).
Nice try on pretending there is actually a problem to be solved using H1—Bs though!
H1-Bs are a scam!
the recruiters are indian.
they control who is submitted to what jobs.
many Americans never even see most positions before they’re already awarded an indian.
Common Core did to math education what whole word replacing phonics did to English language education.
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
A Nation at Risk, 1983
And we were sold a bill of goods by the education *experts* that this was the way to go.
If I were Czar the first thing I would do is disband all the colleges of education. Based on results, they are completely counterproductive.
” In 2024, a staggering 72% of eighth-graders failed to score at the proficient level in math...”
It is likely that the sample did not include home schooled youth.
711 and Duncan Donuts also love H1Bs.
“The real reason for these visas is our schools aren’t teaching math well enough.”
Hard to teach math when half the class has 80 IQs.
I saw the way they are teaching multiplication in Common Core. It’s nuts. Parents can’t help the kids, even after trying to learn how it’s taught. If they teach what they know it isn’t “how they want us to do it”...which should be irrelevant, either you get the right answer or you don’t.
I’ve always thought it was deliberate.
Math (word problems, algebra and calculus) teaches you how to think. It is more than adding numbers.
Why are all of history’s greatest thinkers mathematicians?
EC
math is weight-lifting for the mind ...
What Muskrat really means is that he, like the rest of the Silicon Valley oligarchy, wants foreign tech workers who will work for half the salary of American tech workers.
There's no shortage of Americans with computer science, engineering, or math degrees, including advanced degrees. On the other hand, from the perspective of the Silicon Valley oligarchs, there probably is a shortage of Americans with advanced engineering degrees who are willing to work at the same pay grade as illiterate Walmart or Taco Bell employees, whereas an H1B from China or Pakistan would be happy to oblige.
It's no different from the claim that America "needs" Mexican or Central American farm workers, construction workers, or landscapers. It isn't as though there aren't plenty of Americans who are willing and able to do the work, they just have the audacity to demand American rather than Third World salaries in exchange for the labor.
It has nothing to do with American schools and all about money. They pay them less and get away with it.
In the 90s we had many Americans going into IT related areas, making good money and living the American dream. Then companies outsourced it, then they starting to bring in large numbers of Indian here with H1b Visas. Many Americans seeing the light, moved on to other fields.
We easily have enough Americans to do the job (if you pay them).
It is a sad truth that US students, with the possible exception of Asian students, are virtually math illiterate. Of course many of these same students can’t read at grade level either. The US public education system is a failure factory churning out students who can’t read, write or do elementary math. The teachers unions and educational establishment are largely to blame, but local elected school boards must share responsibility too. School boards of late seem to be more concerned with transgendered students participating in women’s athletics and sharing locker rooms than the real education of their students. The recent arrest of an illegal alien with numerous felonies and very dubious academic credentials who was working as the Superintendent of the Des Moines, IA school system with a $300,000 annual salary is indicative of the failure of local school boards.
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