Elon was wrong about H-1Bs

The two “Steves” in Trump’s orbit, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, have rebuked Big Tech’s promotion of H-1B visas, which bring in foreign workers to do entry-level engineering and other jobs. Bannon, who refers to Elon Musk and similar pro-Trump tech advocates as “recent converts,” points out that there should be “zero H-1B visas.”

There is no shortage of Americans with science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) degrees to fill jobs at high-tech companies. In 2022 there were 17.2 million working-age Americans, mostly men, holding STEM degrees, but only half of them were employed in STEM jobs.

Half of the millions of STEM-trained Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or retrained in another field. Moreover, inflation-adjusted wages for STEM workers have barely increased since 2008, despite the high-tech boom that has made Rockefellers out of hundreds of executives at these companies.

According to Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the first Trump Administration, last year the top 30 American employers for H-1B visas, including Musk’s Tesla, laid off 84,556 workers while also seeking 34,414 new foreign employees under the H-1B program.

It’s hogwash to pretend foreigners must be brought in on visas to fill entry-level positions in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. The motivation for this theft of American jobs is how foreigners become like indentured servants of centuries ago, bound to their employers with less mobility and lower wages that depress salaries for Americans, too.

People from India and China like these visas because it gives them a path to permanent residency in the U.S. along with chain migration for their extended families. Democrats like the visas, in part because new citizens typically vote for Democrat Party candidates for president and other offices.

MAGA is for Americans to fill American jobs, not foreigners. This requires the termination of, or at least a sharp reduction in, visa programs that bring in hordes of foreigners to fill positions here and who ultimately end up running top American companies.

Nearly 100% of the many thousands of H-1B visas sought annually by Google are approved for jobs that many American engineers aspire to obtain, but are passed over in favor of foreigners. The CEO of Google is himself foreign-raised, in India, and attended college there before coming to the United States on a student visa.

Everyone who is against the offshoring of American jobs should likewise be opposed to giving many of the best jobs in our country to foreigners. The stunning America First victory in the recent election is a mandate for letting Americans have American jobs.

There is no shortage of engineering talent in the United States, where “Yankee Ingenuity” is the source of much of the prosperity today. More than 90% of the most important inventions have been by Americans, while the rest of the world copies us in their attempt to keep up.

President Trump’s uncle John, to whom Donald referred with great admiration during campaign rallies, was an American inventor and longtime MIT professor of electrical engineering. He improved X-ray technology for the benefit of many future medical patients.

Displaying the same pluck that Trump himself is adored for, in 1936 John Trump demonstrated for the media a new million-volt X-ray machine. While operating the machine two high-voltage sparks shot out and smacked him right on his nose.

Yet Professor Trump was unfazed by this attack, and kept on going with his presentation. Because the machine was electrically grounded, he declared, the sparks could not be fatal.

Elon Musk compares tech company visas to professional sports teams bringing in foreigners, but that is also harmful to Americans. The highest-paying baseball salaries are going to foreigners now, while many college basketball scholarships are granted to foreign players hoping to play in the NBA here.

Many of these foreigners do not speak English and have no desire to assimilate into our culture. These foreign athletes are not role models for American youth to play in Little League, or on high school teams.

College sports have long been beneficial in attracting young men to improve their education while partaking in healthy activities that teach them the value of hard work and sportsmanship. But when college sports scholarships go to foreign athletes instead, the result is a decline in young American men benefiting from the college experience.

Black athletes may be harmed the most by this trend to prefer foreigners over Americans in sports. In three decades the percentage of Major League Baseball that is black has declined from 19% to only 6.3% today, and fewer still are receiving the top salaries in contrast with a generation ago.

In addition to bringing jobs back to America from foreign countries, we need to end the practice of importing foreigners to take jobs away from Americans here.