The Great Fake H1-B Controversy

We all recognize this pattern that manifests in various ways from the bickering of married couples to successful rock bands breaking up. The most minor disputes explode into major ones that no one wanted in the first place with sometimes disastrous results.

This fits the internal MAGA dispute over H1-B visas to the proverbial T. The only ones who profit from this kerfuffle, or whatever it is, are the left and their fading media allies, desperate for something to latch onto about MAGA and create dissension.

Do we want to give them that privilege at this point? Frankly, I think it s stupid, especially for a disagreement that would likely work itself out almost automatically and favorably for almost all concerned anyway. (Yes, there will always be complainers, but that s, well, the world.)

This uproar began when Donald Trump selected as his AI advisor technologist Sriram Krishnan, a man who came here on something called an L-1 visa (intra-company transfer) in 2007 to work at Microsoft.

Some ultra-MAGA loyalists became extremely upset. Why not an American, they demanded, ignoring that most of Trump s other picks were as ultra-MAGA and American as they are.

It escalated as Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk logged on in favor of H1-B, the temporary visa for highly-trained people from abroad.

Vivek wrote something on X that was fairly obvious but nonetheless sent his adversaries further up the wall that the American educational system has been bad for so long that we didn t have enough domestic talent to fit all the necessary tech roles.

Of course, he was right. We don t need to rehearse the litany of academic monstrosities from woke to DEI that have turned our universities into indoctrination camps, sending real education into the caboose. I would argue this goes back even further than Vivek said, all the way to John Dewey.

Beyond that, it has been alleged that our educational system is too slow for the pace of tech, students finally learning what they need to know in graduate school when young people in other countries are already utilizing the latest ever-changing tech developments as teenagers.

Also at play is that compared to the rest of the world we are a rich society. Inertia has set in, the fire gone from the belly. Not everyone has Trump s fight, fight, fight, though we may be learning.. But young people in poorer nations already have a deep need to excel due to their conditions. Witness how in tennis great players are coming from places like Belarus and Serbia.

We need the H1-B to bring the best here to be able to compete. The national security implications are obvious.

Finally, it is immigrants, LEGAL immigrants, who have built much of this country. We should be celebrating this. It s real diversity rather than the faux leftwing kind.

That s the argument in favor. What about the against?

via americanrefugees.substack.com

Roger Simon.