Trump advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy expose rift with MAGA loyalists over immigrant tech workersThe backlash escalated Thursday, when Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-open-rift-maga-loyalists-skilled-worker-visa-rcna185557A multiday firestorm has erupted over comments made by two incoming advisers to President-elect Donald Trump about H-1B temporary worker visas, a carve-out for high-skilled workers who some in the MAGA world say are taking American jobs. The fight began brewing on X ahead of Christmas after Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to a top artificial intelligence policy post, triggering a racially charged backlash that surfaced Krishnan’s comments advocating for green cards for skilled workers.The backlash escalated Thursday, when Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” attributing this as one reason for the influx of foreign tech workers. Ramaswamy, who is Indian American, went on to say he hopes Trump’s presidency can start an American culture that prioritizes “hard work over laziness.” Tech executives have called for greater access to the widely used immigration visa, arguing that it is necessary to fill high-skilled tech and other specialized jobs.
>>1371404Trump adviser Elon Musk, with whom Ramaswamy is a co-leader of Trump’s incoming Department of Government Efficiency, had posted Thursday on X in response to a tweet about a shortage of skilled workers in Silicon Valley that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” Musk, who was born in South Africa and is a naturalized American citizen, urged people to think "of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”The posts by the two generated backlash among ardent MAGA supporters who want a hard-line approach to all forms of immigration, and exposed a chasm in the relationship with a right-wing faction of some of Trump's closest allies and advisers from the tech sector.The rift between anti-immigration MAGA loyalists and pro-immigration tech billionaires and executives also marks one of the biggest post-election fights within Trump’s coalition, and came just days after Musk instigated a major battle over the federal budget that nearly led to a government shutdown. “If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” Steve Bannon said on his "War Room" show Friday morning, calling many of the arguments in favor of H-1Bs a "total scam."Trump transition spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During the campaign, Trump sent mixed signals on skilled worker immigration. He said on a tech industry podcast in June that noncitizens in the U.S. should "automatically" get green cards when they graduate from college, but his campaign said he was referring only to "the most skilled graduates" who are "the most thoroughly vetted."
>>1371405Conservative commentator Mike Cernovich was among those who responded to Ramaswamy’s post on Thursday, replying that “the Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B’s. Then why did everyone want to come here?” Some attempted to broker agreement between the factions, with venture capitalist Shaun Maguire defending Krishnan and writing that "the tech community should also hear MAGA’s points," namely that immigrants "should be skilled AND aligned w/ American values" and fully assimilate.Later, Cernovich shared an article on Ramaswamy more than a year ago on the campaign trail promising to “gut” the H-1B system if he were elected. Ramaswamy retweeted it.Also on Thursday, some MAGA loyalists said Musk had begun to retaliate against them by censoring them on X, which he owns, because of their opposition to skilled immigration.Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and close Trump ally, said that X had demonetized her — cutting off her ability to collect subscription fees and other revenue on the site — and had revoked her blue verification checkmark, about two days after she began criticizing Musk over tech industry visas."Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies," she posted on X, calling the actions "retaliation." Loomer has 1.4 million followers on X, and earlier in the week, she had been among the first prominent conservatives to criticize Trump's appointment of Krishnan to an AI post.Some other right-wing accounts including @rawsalerts, which has 1.1 million followers, also said they lost their verified status Thursday. The news account did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
>>1371408Musk did not respond directly to either Loomer or the others claiming censorship, but earlier in the day, he posted on X about Loomer's anti-immigration commentary."Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore," he wrote.Later, Musk posted what he called "a reminder" on X that the site's algorithm automatically reduces the reach of a user if they're frequently blocked or muted by other, credible users."If far more credible, verified subscriber accounts (not bots) mute/block your account compared to those who like your posts, your reach will decline significantly," Musk posted.Musk and X did not immediately respond to NBC News' requests for comment Friday.Loomer also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including on whether she plans to switch platforms.The anti-immigration backlash over Musk and Ramaswamy's comments sparked a broader conversation about how to revive lagging American industry. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat responded that the rebirth of at least one example of “sagging” American industry “seems extremely unlikely to emerge from a test-oriented, grindset, no-sleepovers or mall-hangouts mentality.” Retweeting Ramaswamy earlier, Douthat suggested that Trump's incoming adviser had misidentified the cause and assessed American cultural priorities and strengths inaccurately.The dispute over high-skilled immigration in Trump world comes as the Biden administration, in its final days, published a new regulation to “modernize” the H‑1B program, set to take effect Jan. 17, just three days before Trump takes office.
>>1371409Trump has promised to sign deportation orders on his first day in office, and in the latest indication of the incoming administration’s focus on immigration, his “border czar,” Tom Homan, told NBC on Thursday that “family detention, if we bring it back, it’s like, it’s on the table. We haven’t finished the plans yet.”
Republicans want to keep voters uneducated, ignorant, poor and desperate to keep capitalism alive. White Nationalists are the perfect example. They chant "jews will not replace us(with Hispanics)". So their masters replace them with South Asians.
>the working class nativists thought the billionaire oligarch was going to jeopardize his own wealth for the sake of an ethnostateanother 'fell for it again' award to the MAGAtards
>>1371404They voted for this.
>>1371404>venerated mediocrity over excellenceAnd they are correct. Let's get pronouns and gender out of school.
>>1371439>Implying there's going to be a school left.
>>1371440Probably not but some schools are already deciding to dump their leftist trash propaganda classes from their curriculum to prepare for a common sense trump presidency >https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/26/cancellations-fall-semester/>The canceled History and Literature classes included...>Marx at the Mall: Consumer Culture & Its Critics>Global Transgender Histories>Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America>The Making of Race across Latin America
>>1371441Go back there
I thought Trump's GOP MAGA original election platform is for both MASS DEPORTATIONS (ICE) and STOP IMMIGRATIONs, akin to building even more mexican border walls.If they suddenly cancel the "STOP IMMIGRATION" and all the border walls agenda, then their mass deportations essentially become useless, as it becomes a merry-go-around farce, with the kicked-out re-entering USA over-again with fake H1B/Work Visas!
>>1371441They literally said only 6 out of the 30 cancelled classes were "muh liberal arts and history". Also, if you actually read your own article, it's less for any culture war reasons and more because the only professors teaching them either retired or moved to other schools.
>>1371417>80 more billion for Ukraine while North Carolina residents are still homeless
>>1371444>>1371442>ass-blasted "global tranny studies" major
>>1371463>never graduated 8th grade
>>1371465I have an MSc in an engineering field from a top 10 US uni for it's field
>>1371415America got ignoranter[sic] because of a drastic reduction of whites. Hispanic and black American populations grew, whites declined, and the US was left with the mostly rural, uneducated whites. And because of the inherent bigotry against these people of color groups they didn't get the needed education.
>>1371470SAAAR!
>>1371459Deserved
>>1371404i mean is he wrong? americans have a superiority complex despite being a country of privileged retards that brag about being smart because of what the brightest americans achieved even though the average american is a gutter swine.
>>1371444>downplaying 20% of classes>fired for hate speech or arrested.https://www.koin.com/news/education/university-of-oregon-parts-ways-with-employee-who-told-trump-supporters-to-jump-off-a-bridge/
>>1371515Different university, retard. And that guy wasn't even a professor, just an employee.
>>1371459looks like you win the 'hopelessly uninformed dumbass of the day' award too, congrats lol
>>1371517he was an administrator which is higher up then a professor. retard
>>1371512>is he wrong? Yes. An analysis of the data shows that this program is overwhelmingly used to employ lower-level IT people for cheaper, not people with elite talent ("super talented engineers") that the country doesn't have. The visas themselves are tied to the specific job, so the visa holder can't threaten to quit for higher wages or better conditions without getting sent back to their country of origin. This obviously reduces wages and erodes conditions for Americans as a whole, which I'm sure you already figured out, because you're so smart. If you live in a country with an analogous program, it's doing the same thing to your jobs, even if you're too obtuse to realize it. Believing anything that comes out of this guy's mouth is completely retarded, btw. His sports team analogy is bullshit, considering the league minimum for professional sports teams is hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (because they actually employ elite talent, unlike Tesla).
>>1371582It was HER TURN!
>>1371582so system is good on paper but gets taken over by embezzling pieces of shits who'd of guessed sounds like americaism.
>>1371586wow anon you've convinced me, maybe hiring street shitters instead of giving american jobs is a GOOD thing after all
>>1371590you expected an american to do an indian's job? lmao that's like asking a monkey to cook for you.
>>1371544>Why no, I don't understand how college works. Why should I? I've never been there.
>>1371512On a technical level, no. However he's bullshitting because what he actually uses the visas for is exploiting foreign workers that can be paid less and effectively forced to be indentured.
>>1371611administrator is higher ranked then a professor you uneducated american retard
>>1371512>i mean is he wrong?Yeah.America is responsible for the vast majority of technical, aeronautical and medical advancements in the last 200 years. The only reason why China, India etc. can compete with us is because they treat human life as disposable, which means they can throw slave labor at gigantic engineering projects. They also steal the vast majority of our technology because, due to the pitfalls of liberalism and anti-racism, we basically let any ESL retard walk out of our universities with cameras and thumb drives loaded with trade secrets.Musk is especially retarded because the nation of India has an average IQ of 76, which is two points above mental retardation. The average pajeet wouldn't qualify for the military here, let alone any engineering positions.H1B visas are public, by the by. You can see who musk is hiring and for what positions. The vast majority are for service jobs, like cooks and janitors. One more thing: Legally, the maximum number of H1B visas issued per year is supposed to be capped at 85k. A deep dive into State Department statistics shows that the US has been approving literally hundreds of thousands of visas, year after year, since 2022. The US approved 800k visas in 2023 alone. This is basically why everybody hates merchants in general. They are too busy seeking monetary profit and don't actually give a shit about the community they service.
>>1371665>H1B visas are public, by the by. You can see who musk is hiring and for what positions. The vast majority are for service jobs, like cooks and janitors.You can't get an h1b visa for cooking and janitorial jobs you lying assfaggot. A requirement to obtain one is for a job requiring "Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge"But I'm sure you know this and are either a bot or a paid shill. Or maybe you are just a legit retard, idk
>>1371665americans do nothing worthwhile they're parasites on the world.Talking about average IQ is pointless because american IQ is artificially increased by living standards, the average american is an absolute retard and its hilarious americans think themselves the center of the world when their education system is the embodiment of participation award.
>>1371677>A requirement to obtain one is for a job requiring "Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge"Sure.H1B Tennis Coaches.https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=tennis&city=&year=2024
>>1371686>Talking about average IQ is pointlessIt's the best indicator of lifelong success anon.The IQ of the average American is around 100. Which, while not particularly outstanding, is several deviations above actual mental retardation.You literally could not trust your average indian to operate a motor vehicle. Which is probably why they keep getting hit by trains.
>>1371707you're propped up by not being braindamaged from living conditionsthe average american is stupider then an indian and lives in an environment where they're pampered and never have to struggle
>>1371708>the average american is stupider then an indian and lives in an environment where they're pamperedMemes perpetuated by poojeets.The average American lives in africa-tier squalor. You only hear from the ones who have an internet connection; those in liberal hubs and on coastal cities. Unlike the poos, the average American knows to wash their hands before handling food. They are not afraid of toilets. They don't shit in rivers or on street corners. Because they are not animals in human form.
>>1371709https://reason.com/2018/02/09/this-sociology-professor-insists-austral/american schools refuse to fail students, the average american is just literal braindead livestock that pretends to have an education in an environment where they literally cannot fail.
It should have been readily apparent that the plan to end illegal immigration was simply to transform it into legal immigration.
>>1371589How do you read that and conclude that it’s even “good on paper”?
>>1371677>>1371686Elon and Vivek are in this very thread?
>>1371404The right will fold and kneel like they do with everything. They're weak and pathetic.
>>1371715>>1371716because americans are retards who deserve to be punished for crimes against humanity
>>1371717greasy democrat hands wrote this as they're being fucked by another man. why are you even trying to self-project democrats are retards
>>1371727They also shot a ceo.
>>1371727Would you say you think about getting fucked or watching others be fucked by a man a lot anon?
>>1371745kek
>>1371744Who is "They"?
>>1371780Bedouins
1) Import skilled workers2) ? 3) Profit
