The incoming co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency are being criticized for their comments about legal immigration and foreign work visas. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said it’s necessary for companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers because the American workforce doesn’t have enough qualified candidates.
Musk said America needs more than 300,000 engineers immediately to help boost America’s semiconductor industry.
It wasn’t just what Musk and Ramaswamy said, though, it’s how they said it.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk posted on X.
No, we need more like double that number yesterday!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2024
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…
Ramaswamy said the reason for the shortage is a problem with American culture.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote. “’Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024
That didn’t sit well with former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley.
“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.”
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
President-elect Donald Trump supported bringing in more highly-skilled workers during the campaign.
“You graduate from a college I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card,” Trump said in June on the “All-In Podcast.”
“I know of stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t,” Trump continued. “They go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places and they become multibillionaires employing thousands and thousands of people and it could have been done here.”
Ramaswamy hopes Americans will strive to increase their achievements and called Trump’s election a potential Sputnik moment for prioritizing things like excellence, nerdiness and hard work.
