The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on the online dispute over the H-1B skilled worker visa program, with the former calling it a civil war within the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, while the latter tried to make him great. importance because of its implications for America’s future.
The Washington Post – in a report by Pranshu Verma and Kat Zakrzewski – found that the clash between far-right activists, billionaire Elon Musk and other supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the need for a ” “Skilled Worker Immigration Program” which has long been the lifeblood of Silicon Valley, indicates a possible division between… the president’s national base and the technology executives who came to support him.
The controversy that spilled over the holidays could lead to a split within the Trump coalition over how to implement immigration policy, after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized the Trump’s choice to nominate Sriram Krishnan, a business and technology man of Indian origin. investor, as an advisor. A major politician in the field of artificial intelligence.
Laura Loomer recalled Krishnan’s past support for removing some restrictions on green cards and making it easier for skilled foreign workers to enter the United States, writing that this policy “is directly in conflict” with Trump’s agenda.
“We look forward to the inevitable divorce between President Trump and the tech giants,” Loomer said. “Let’s pray that the fake love fest between tech giants and Trump ends as soon as possible.”
Challenges await you
With these criticisms, Laura Loomer clashed with some of Trump’s closest advisors, such as Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, David Sachs, who will be responsible for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies for the president-elect, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will serve as the president-elect’s co-head of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. -head a commission aimed at reducing public spending.
Ramaswamy said American culture does not produce enough skilled workers to support cutting-edge companies, writing on the website X that “normalcy is not enough in the highly competitive global market for tech talent.” If we celebrate this, China will be victorious.”
The online battle sparked a wave of racist posts from Loomer and accusations of censorship, and she said her account on , had started to take revenge on her.
Prominent Republicans have supported Loomer’s position, and former Republican candidate Nikki Haley said, “If the tech industry needs workers, invest in our education system.” Invest in America’s workforce. Indeed, tech executives have said they prefer to employ American workers to get results. visas for foreign workers are expensive and can take a long time.
Crucial means
But Musk, who once held a skilled worker visa and relied on it to hire thousands of Tesla employees, said recruiting foreign workers is a crucial way for tech companies to get top engineering talent to compete on a global scale, writing on X: “The number of people who are extremely talented and motivated engineers. “In the United States, Ultra is very weak, and if you want your team to win the championship, you have to recruit the best talent wherever they are.”
The online spat reflects the challenges Trump will face in maintaining the uneasy political alliance that brought him to the White House, which included unprecedented levels of financial support from Elon Musk and other billionaires from Silicon Valley. “It’s a sign,” said Samuel Hammond, chief economist. at the American Innovation Foundation. “For future conflicts, it’s like a preliminary game.”
Trump has sought to position himself as a champion of legal immigration, even as he cut off immigration pathways during his first term, and has given few details on how he would approach skilled immigration in the technology industry during his second term.
Dynamic and static
As for the New York Times, it started – through the column of the writer David Brooks – from an idea by the writer Virginia Postrell in which she affirmed that the real division in politics is not between the left and the right, but rather between the dynamic and the static, where the dynamic believes in open change, while the static wants to establish protection, saying that we do not need to rush into the future, we must take care of our future.
This conflict – according to the writer – is currently troubling the Republican Party, because Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are dynamic people, who want to welcome talented immigrants into the American economy and are irritated by those who want to restrict immigration. particularly supporters of canceling the gifted visa program.
The author believes that this is the fundamental type of tension within the Republican Party, namely that Trump chose a dynamic capitalist party that relies on the free market and instilled in it a preventative, backward and reactionary philosophy, adding that we will also see this type of conflict when it comes to economic regulation, trade, technology policy and labor policy, housing policy, etc.
Epic race
David Brooks expressed contempt for reactionaries like himself, because their country is in an epic race with China for the future and with those promoting artificial intelligence and other technologies, implying the need to attract the best talents in the world. while reactionaries believe that recent decades of rapid change have eroded many people’s secure foundations, such as stable families.
I don’t know, Brooks says, whether Trumpism will become a serious governing force, but if it does, its main task will be to resolve the tension between its dynamics and its statics: making ordinary people feel like they’re being taken supported and supported. their visions are taken into account, so that they feel safe enough to welcome them, with all the blessings that skilled immigrants and technological change bring to Americans.