Shortsighted tech bros seek to leave American STEM talent even further behind.
America first means putting Americans first for hiring and training in tech jobs.
Over the week, we’ve witnessed a heated debate on social media over immigration and tech policy and its ramifications for American citizens, who are often displaced in the conversation.
Please check out our curated sponsors and support The Dossier.
Dubbed "the rocket fuel of AI" by Wired, this innovation is causing a stir on Wall Street. With projections hitting $80 trillion – that's 41 Amazons – the potential is huge. But here's the deal: sharp investors who are ahead of the game have the opportunity to invest in a technology poised for domination. Thanks to The Motley Fool, you can access the full story in this exclusive report.
In case you missed it:
The “tech bros,” led by Elon Musk and many prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the tech space, have argued that it is essential for the U.S. to reform immigration policy under Trump term two, specifically, to allow for more foreign workers to fill various tech roles. They argue that there are simply not enough qualified American workers to fill the demand in the field. Musk has likened it to building “the best sports team” because of the “dire shortage” of tech talent, while others say bringing skilled labor from abroad will take the American economy to new heights.
Unsurprisingly, this coalition of prominent voices — many of whom are hoping to leverage their support for President Trump into policy action — has received extensive pushback on X and elsewhere, especially from those who voted for President-elect Trump.
I believe that most of these men have good intentions, and most are truly patriotic citizens, but they are coming off as both ignorant and entitled, which isn’t particularly surprising since many of them sat on their hands while San Francisco turned into a third-world slum.
Most importantly, their unsolicited but incentivized policy recommendations would have catastrophic ramifications for American citizens.
The issue begins in the education system, which doesn’t facilitate the interests of gifted students. After High School, American students are then forced to compete globally with foreign students for slots in prized U.S. STEM university programs. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mr. Musk and his acquaintances are struggling to find American talent when the system all too often leaves Americans behind while elevating foreign nationals into prized university programs.
It continues into the job market when Americans need to compete against foreigners on H-1B visas who will take a much lower salary (via government-incentivized programs that benefit the corporation) than their citizen peers.
There’s a philosophical component that underpins this debate, too. It seems many of the proponents for a more robust legal importation policy believe that elected officials need not prioritize the American citizen over outsiders. To them, America represents something merely akin to an LLC.
Yet America became the greatest economic engine in the world because a significant amount of our citizens stayed true to our founding ideas and applied those principles to their work. Should we lose the ideas that connect Americans, we become nothing more than a purposeless technocratic meritocracy that would inevitably become enveloped by dictatorial rulers.
America does not need to import foreign talent for our system to thrive. There is plenty of talent and emerging talent here. Our industries should feel a responsibility for hiring and training that talent, given that they operate within the most business-friendly environment the world has ever known.
Somehow, Taiwan, South Korea, etc, became tech and AI powerhouses without importing a single new citizen from abroad. They don’t need to import (and prioritize) foreigners over their citizens. And, of course, America should solve our disastrous illegal immigration debacle before lifting a finger to bring more foreign labor, legal or illegal, into the country.
Blockbusting cheap labor into the country does not magically solve any of our issues. It only exacerbates them and leaves American citizens further behind. Without reorienting the incentive structure, Americans will continually find themselves discriminated against and frozen out of good jobs in the sector.
And the president-elect’s supporters, unlike some tech titans who often play both sides of the political horse race, know that America first means putting Americans first.
Very well said, Jordan. I’m an electrical engineer, and fortunately the state school I went to in the early 90s was almost entirely American students. I understand that’s not the case today.
This country invented the transistor, the computer, we built the first rockets and landed on the moon and Mars. Our culture of innovation leads to such things. We need to encourage American students to study STEM and then incentivize companies to hire them.
I briefly worked for a major tech company. My coworkers were 75% Indian and maybe another 20% Asian. Most of them were perfectly mediocre. (Then the company instituted a hiring freeze and declared all new work would be outsourced to their offices in India.) We can and should demand better than mediocre.
"There aren't enough qualified Americans with the correct technical skills," bemoans the tech company as they underpay foreign workers that they overwork and treat like serfs under constant threat of deportation. "We just don't understand why Americans don't want to take the positions on the same terms as H1B workers," they cry as those worker's entire family are living at 1/50th the cost of living in America.
It isn't hard to understand what is going on. This is the most basic concept of the free market: if there isn't enough of something, offer to pay more. Once the pay is high enough, the US will produce more qualified people. What tech companies do is the opposite: they pay less by exploiting worker visa programs and then they complain that they need more visa workers to work at the lower wages since no one else will.