The Musk vs. MAGA H-1B visa debate misses a glaring issue

The immigration scheme is inherently racist and anti-meritocratic – and I should know

The H-1B visa program is a bad deal for everyone. And the online civil war between Elon Musk and Trump’s MAGA supporters is missing the point.

All the drama started recently when a user of Musk’s X platform suggested that the supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump basically consist of tech bros insisting on the need for foreign “skilled workers” on one hand, and those insisting on keeping American jobs for Americans on the other.

Musk said he was in favor of “bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” and told critics to “go f**k yourself in the face,” referring to them as “subtards.”

As a migrant from South Africa, via Canada, he’s ultimately a beneficiary of migration himself, he explained. And hey, look at all the good that he’s done. And “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists” opposing his position on the issue are “contemptible fools.”

In reality, it’s the program itself that’s racist. This is why it needs to go, and not be jacked up even further to increase the number of worker permits, as Trump’s new artificial intelligence policy adviser, Sriram Krishnan, has proposed.

As a Canadian citizen who was hired to co-host a nightly nationally broadcast TV news show in New York City, my then employer had to petition the US government for my work permission. If I was going to be taking a well-paying job away from an American, then they had to make a good case for it. I was told that the permit with the easiest qualifications to achieve, by a landslide, was the H-1B “skilled worker” visa. Basically, all you needed was a college degree or some relevant experience, and a statement from the employer that it’s what the job required. And that’s it. Not exactly the high-quality workers that the category label would suggest.

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But I was told to forget about applying for the H-1B visa right from the get-go. Why? Because I was Canadian. And it was a known fact even two decades ago that almost all of these visas go to Indians wanting to work in Silicon Valley. US Immigration figures confirm this. According to statistics published in 2019, 75% of H-1B visas went to Indian nationals. Chinese citizens were second at just 12%. In third place were Canadians at just 1% of total petitions.

You can’t tell me that Canadians are less educated than Indians, or less interested in working in the US. They just don’t have Big Tech handling their applications and flooding US immigration with requests for overwhelmingly Indian nationals the second the quota renews every year, and guaranteeing that a single deserving person on their own – the very definition of a minority – won’t have the slightest hope of even being considered.

It’s effectively a modern slavery program reserved almost exclusively for these workers from the developing world. It’s not that the US salaries that they’re being offered are particularly low. In fact, stats show that their average US pay is over $100,000.

But the H-1B visa is tied to the employer, and if you want to change, another employer has to file to sponsor you. And you probably have to wait until the cap is renewed again the following year. This means it can be used to pressure the foreign worker to tolerate conditions or requests that an American worker likely wouldn’t. It’s not hard to see the appeal for guys like Musk, who would love to have everyone sleep on the floor at the office alongside them like it’s one giant, interminable (and profitable) slumber party.

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The visa that I ultimately obtained was an O-1 for “extraordinary ability.” This required “a level of expertise indicating that you are one of the small percentage who have arisen to the very top of the field,” as defined by US immigration services. With this one, you can easily switch employer sponsorships, or even have your agent fulfill that role, preventing you from being tied to any one opportunity or contract. There was no quota to worry about, and the applications are made on a rolling case-by-case basis – not rammed through en masse by tech bros effectively favoring one particular nationality in a move that can only be described as systemic racism.

The O-1 category is what really brings in the best talent that, according to guys like Musk, America needs to compete on the global playing field. So, why don’t they encourage foreign recruits to apply under that category? Clearly because most wouldn’t qualify as legitimately being at the top of their game. They would have to show proof of things like public recognition or authorship, several letters of reference from peers highlighting their significant contributions to the field, and participation on industry panels. This isn’t who Silicon Valley is actually importing, as Musk is trying to pretend.

If Musk is so worried about racist views being expressed in debate about the H-1B program’s merits, then why is he ignoring its chronic marginalization of non-Indians or its lack of flexibility for the mostly Indian nationals who end up working in the US under it?

Trump’s MAGA supporters have essentially just picked up on the visible iceberg created by an immigration initiative that has long been exploited by corporate America, attempting to dress up inherently racist selection as meritocracy – and they’re the ones who are being called bigots?