Elon Musk is arguably more responsible for Donald Trump’s election victory than any single individual other than Trump or his opponent. By buying Twitter (now, X), he provided a platform for Trump and others to counter the mainstream media, and Elon of course endorsed Trump, donated millions to support his campaign, and personally stumped for him in Pennsylvania.
As much as Trump supporters appreciated Elon and other Silicon Valley types like David Sacks helping getting Trump elected, many feared that the price would be more foreign workers for the tech industry. Those fears were validated on Christmas as Elon and others called for just that.
No, we need more like double that number yesterday!
The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.
Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2024
The conflict was further fueled by the revelation that recent Trump appointee Sriram Krishnan wants to lift country caps on green cards…
Point of clarification: Sriram didn’t say he wants to remove all caps on green cards. He said he wants to remove *country* caps on green cards. Right now, every country in the world gets allocated the same number of green cards, no matter how many qualified applicants it has. So…
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 24, 2024
How Many Indian Immigrants Does America Need?
As a number of X users noted, in practice, lifting country caps would further increase Indian immigration at the expense of other countries.
Elon applauded as tech cram school founder Austin Allred, who had previously been fined for deceiving Americans desperate for Silicon Valley jobs…
…Mocked Trump supporters, suggesting they were against welcoming foreign geniuses like Wernher von Braun.
💯😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 26, 2024
But others pointed out that India hasn’t produced many von Brauns–in fact, it has produced fewer hard science Nobel laureates than tiny Croatia, despite having 375x as many people.
Nobel Prize Winners in the Hard Sciences
India (population 1.5 Billion) = 1
Croatia (population 4 million) =2Do you want me to include athletics next? (you don't want that) https://t.co/Hf07IFWSFg
— FbF (@FistedFoucault) December 26, 2024
Indians Chime In, Insult Americans
A number of Indians, both in India and the U.S. chimed in to insult American commenters, with one even suggesting Americans were “inbred”…
Shiv, India has a consanguineous marriage rate of 9.9%, versus 0.1% to 0.2% in the U.S.
That makes Indians 50-100x more inbred than Americans.
— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) December 25, 2024
This, despite India’s sky-high rates of cousin marriage.
— 5chstereo (@5chstereoAI) December 26, 2024
Other Indians and Indian-Americans argued that Americans were turning against “meritocracy” because they couldn’t compete with Indians–this despite Indians (and Indian women in particular) benefiting from pro-DEI policies in the U.S.
Vivek Drives Into The Peter Principle On X
Vivek Ramaswamy, President Trump’s co-head, along with Elon Musk, of the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wrote that American culture was the problem.
Vivek Ramaswamy says the reason US companies hire foreign born talent is because of the degeneracy of American culture, which prizes jocks over nerds, and Stefan over Urkel in Saved By The Bell https://t.co/zVz4g2pgSJ pic.twitter.com/iJMeKfV1Dl
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) December 26, 2024
Vivek seems to have forgotten that he was appointed by an icon of American culture…
… And the folly of comparing American culture invidiously to Indian culture.
Even Vivek’s former Republican primary rival Nikki Haley dunked on him for that post.
There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers. https://t.co/fIGr45C3LD
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) December 26, 2024
Are Indian Engineers Really Smarter Than American Ones?
Why don’t we test that and find out?
A Common Sense Approach
Most Americans would probably be fine with us taking in world-beating geniuses from India and every other country, but Elon Musk, David Sacks, Vivek Ramasamy and others should be sensitive to legitimate concerns and objections:
- We already have a visa category for world-beating geniuses, the O-1. It has no annual numerical or country caps. Americans are tired of the bait-and-switch, where we are told we should welcome geniuses but the tech industry is actually advocating importing more average workers to lower wages.
- An objective test given in environments free of the rampant cheating that plagues India (such as the American consulates mentioned above) would go a long way to assuage concerns about credential fraud and ethnocentric hiring of immigrant tech workers.
- Better to build goodwill first by deporting millions of illegal aliens and raising wages for American workers before expanding legal immigration.
Let’s wrap this up on a positive note by mentioning an excellent, Made In America tech product.
Born In The USA
The original version of the Portfolio Armor iPhone app was built by a self-taught American software programmer based in Maine; the current version is supported by software developers based in Indiana.
If you want to add some downside protection ahead of the new year, you can download our iPhone hedging app by aiming your iPhone camera at the QR code below (or by tapping here, if you’re reading this on your phone).
