Well, how about this “fly in the ointment, monkey in the wrench, a pain in the a--” (Die Hard, 1988)?  Just when we thought everything was in place for a single-minded new era — a closed border, reduced inflation, and an end to wokery (among relief from other insane policies of the Biden regime), we have an internecine war on our hands.  Who knew that Vivek and Elon both viewed us as lazy, retarded, and unskilled, unworthy of the jobs millions of foreigners, mostly Indians, have been imported to fill?

Eternally grateful to both of them for stepping up to support Trump and to volunteer their brilliance in an effort to reduce government waste, which is in the trillions of dollars, we thought they grasped the nature of the principal problem with immigration, illegal and legal.  We were wrong.

Like the rest of the left, Vivek and Elon share the belief that foreign workers, not just the “highly skilled,” are desperately needed here in the U.S.  For Vivek, it’s about our tacky culture — prom queens over math whizzes. Vivek and Elon, it turns out, are as dismissive of the American people as the MAGA-hating left.  Disappointed!  It can’t possibly be that these H-1B visa holders are paid less and thus save the tech companies who hire them millions of dollars.  Is it possible, as many very familiar with the scam know, that the whole point is getting cheap labor to displace equally qualified Americans?

What are H-1B visas?  The popular visa, created in 1990, allows U.S. employers to temporarily offer work to foreign nationals who have “theoretical and practical application” of highly specialized knowledge.  Applicants must have a bachelor’s or higher degree in a specific specialty subject, or equivalent, as a minimum to enter the U.S., according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

How many years ago was it that Disney informed hundreds of its talented workers that they were to be fired but would first be required to train their replacements?  It began in October 2014, with layoffs effective January 2015.  This has been going on for years and years.  It is a scam.  Those foreign hires are no more “highly specialized” than thousands of our own STEM-educated, highly skilled men and women.  This rigged policy keeps wages down and keeps Americans from filling those jobs, all in the name of “we need them because they are more qualified.”  That is an egregious lie.

Vivek and Elon need to realize why the Make American Great Again movement exists. It is as though they both completely missed the point.  Now Trump has to decide how to settle this massive disagreement.  Initially, he announced that he agreed with Vivek and Elon, that he has many such employees on his properties.  But it seems he has confused H-1B visas with H-2A visas for agricultural workers, gardeners, and housekeepers.  He had better get the facts straight, and he must support the American people over foreign hires. 

The brilliant Batya Unger-Sargon argued:

Let me explain to you why I find it so utterly infuriating, what’s happening here.  Before Donald Trump, there was a handshake agreement between both parties to erase our national borders; to import millions and millions of low-wage, cheap labor; and to export and offshore manufacturing, good middle-class jobs to build up the middle class of China and Mexico.  Now, the working class said, no, we will not cheer as you sell off our children’s futures, and they elected Donald Trump to say no to that.  And what did the left do?  The left immediately started to call them racist.  You are a racist if you oppose the selling out of your children’s future for the enrichment of the leftist elites.

Now what we are seeing is the exact same thing, but it’s coming from people who claim to be part of the MAGA movement.  Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy calling American workers lazy and stupid, and anti-Indian racists of all things because they are saying no to the selling out of the future of their children.  And it is so dispiriting to see this coming from the so-called right.

Sargon accused Musk and Ramaswamy of not knowing “what a nation is.”

“These people do not believe in national borders.  They don’t know what a nation is,” she said.  They don’t know what it means to feel a sense of obligation, not just to our fellow Americans because they are fellow Americans, but to people who have less than you.”

Let us hope that Trump has the spine to disagree with Musk and Ramaswamy, to come down on the side of the people, not his resident geniuses who have long operated in a rarefied world of big business and massive wealth.  To borrow another line from another Die Hard (2007), this nation “is not a system; it’s a country.  You’re talking about people, a whole country full of people.”

These illegitimate visa programs need to go, to stop.  Musk may be the richest man on the planet, but he is wholly inexperienced in the world most Americans inhabit, the Americans who have put their faith and trust in Trump to do right by them.  Ramaswamy and Musk need to stop and think about their own particular version of racism: foreigners smart, Americans not so smart.  Trump needs to get them on board not to reform the H-1B program, but to end it. 

Image: Vivek Ramaswamy.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.