OPINION:
Critics worried that Elon Musk would have too much influence on the incoming president can relax. Last week, the world’s richest man received a healthy dose of free speech on his social media platform as fans of making America great pushed back on the feisty billionaire’s desire to expand the H-1B visa program.
Mr. Musk’s engineering-focused companies take advantage of thousands of temporary work authorizations that bring in specialists from countries such as India under the premise that these legal immigrants are only taking jobs that the native-born can’t fill.
“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” the South Africa-born entrepreneur wrote on X. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you will not comprehend.”
In 2024, the H-1B program imported 758,994 highly skilled foreign workers. Or at least “highly skilled” is part of the story we’ve been told.
Online investigators dug into the database of H-1B registrations and found no shortage of day laborers, cooks, janitors and similar entry-level workers. These jobs could easily have been filled without drawing this “talent” from other countries.
It’s not clear why the United States would need to issue visas to bring in foreigners to work as convenience store cashiers, for instance. There’s also no shortage of gender studies majors capable of filling the $72,000-a-year “diversity and inclusion specialist” positions at Yale New Haven Health Services or Citigroup’s $300,000 “diversity function group manager” job.
Confronted with these cases, Mr. Musk conceded, “No question that the H1B system needs to be overhauled.”
The idea of poaching the world’s best talent is a good one. Anyone sharing American values and possessing exceptional skills should receive an invitation to put that talent to work here. In practice, however, there is reason to suspect tech companies use the program to bring in cheap, ordinary labor. Since visa holders are beholden to their employer to maintain their status, the system also adds an element of indentured servitude.
Worse, the program plays into the tech companies’ desire to “diversify” their workforce by turning away qualified, native-born engineers who belong to the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy,” as former Google whistleblower James Damore suggested in a memo.
Cognizant, an information technology staffing firm, is one of the biggest H-1B visa program users. A federal jury in California just found the company guilty of discriminating against employees who are not from India. Company insiders testified under oath about the tactics used to shut the door of opportunity to “Americans, Europeans that were technically inferior to South Asians.”
Jurors were convinced that employees placed on the bench before being fired weeks later had greater experience and skills than their foreign replacements.
If there is truly a shortage of engineering talent on our shores, the best place to address it is America’s higher education system. There’s no reason this country can’t outproduce the rest of the world in engineering talent, but doing so means getting rid of fake majors such as gender studies.
A true “America First” policy must mean just that. Nobody should be hired from beyond our shores unless it is impossible to fill the position with a U.S.-born employee — even if it costs a bit more.
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