Vivek Ramaswamy criticizing American culture draws MAGA ire

On By Littum

President-elect Donald Trump’s attempt to keep Silicon Valley tech moguls in a coalition with his more rabid anti-immigrant supporters hit a snag this week after he appointed Indian-born venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to a top artificial intelligence post in his future administration. . Far-right social media influencer and Trump ally Laura Loomer said Krishnan’s desire for more H-1B visas for “highly skilled” foreign workers is “in direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda.

Elon Musk, who once held an H-1B visa, said it’s important to seek the best talent wherever it is. That’s a good argument.

Trump adviser and major campaign donor Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and once held an H-1B visa, said it’s important to seek the best talent wherever it is. That’s a good argument. But then his fellow DOGE co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was born in Ohio to Indian immigrants, came forward to blame 1990s-era sitcom depictions of “cool” and “nerd” kids for what he sees as the country’s lack of engineers. We’d have more engineers, he argues, if America praised the Screech character from “Saved by the Bell” instead of his pretty-boy prep and jock counterparts.

Speaking about the H-1B visa program during his 2016 campaign, Trump said: “We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for the workers.” During his first term, Trump pulled it off harder for foreign-born workers to enter the United Statesif he planned to do anything differently this time, he wouldn’t have appointed Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for policy.

Loomer is right to note that Trump’s selection of Krishnan as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence is odd, especially given Krishnan’s remark to Musk on X last month that “Anything to remove national borders for green cards / unlocking skilled immigration would be huge.”

But I’ll take political incoherence over total commitment to a bad idea. If Krishnan can convince Trump to be more open to foreign workers, better for this country.

People from India account for about 75% of those applying for H-1B visas. At less than 12%, people from China account for the second most applications. (It is worth noting that more than a third of the world’s population lives in either China or India, and that the population of each country exceeds that of the United States by more than a billion.)

The fact that 35% of people in the world live in either India or China – and that 95% live outside the US – means that there is more talent outside this country than there is in it. It therefore makes sense for any business that expects to be competitive on the global stage to seek out talent wherever they are, and it makes sense for our government to let them in.

“The number of people who are super skilled engineers AND super motivated in the US is way too low,” Musk said in a Christmas Day post on X. “If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent where preferably they can be.” To say that the American talent pool is “too low” sounds like an unwarranted judgment. Suffice it to say, the world has a deeper talent pool than any country.

The USA’s medal tally at this year’s Paris Olympics underscores that. Even though no country won more golds and even though the USA won 35 more than its closest competitor, China, did – other countries still won 88% of the gold and 88% of the total medals awarded.

Asking why an American employer might award a job to someone outside the US is like being mad that someone overseas is exceptionally fast or strong or graceful.

Suffice it to say, the world has a deeper talent pool than any country.

But instead of making the relatively safe argument that the world is overflowing with talent, the confident Ramaswamy, who promised to “gut” the program when he ran for presidentdecided to attack American culture.

In an X post he argues that there is not “an innate American IQ deficit”, but referring to the mass pop culture of his youth in the 1990s, he argued that “A culture that reveres Cory from ‘Boy Meets World’… or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters’ … will not produce the best engineers.”

He added that he knew “*several* sets of immigrant parents in the ’90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch these TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity … and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates.”

The logical fallacy is obvious. Just because some people who weren’t allowed to do silly, broad sitcoms aimed mainly at kids became “wildly successful STEM grads” doesn’t mean they succeeded because those shows were banned. But that is hardly the biggest problem with Ramaswamy’s argument. Why does he think character tropes in 30-year-old sitcoms have anything to do with the quality or quantity of our engineers? Why does he think that a country’s culture should be measured by the quantity or quality of its engineers?

And perhaps most importantly, why doesn’t he know that Steve Urkel ultimately embarked on a successful STEM career – and won the beautiful Laura Winslow?! Did his parents ban the show? Wait, he’s including himself in the “wildly successful STEM graduates”, isn’t he?

This is a throwdown we should hope is won by those who support more H-1B visas — even those who are self-important and obnoxious.

Apart from being simplistic, Ramaswamy’s argument also had the effect of alienating the MAGA crowd that he worked so hard to please as a presidential candidate.

“I always love when These tech bros will tell you that they have no understanding of American culture and then have the gall to tell you that YOU are the problem with America,” Brenden Dilley, a pro-Trump podcaster, wrote on X. Steve Bannon, on his “War Room” podcast, called many of the pro-H-1B arguments a “total sham” and added, “If we’re going to have a rollback, let’s have it now.”

This is a throwdown we should hope is won by those who support more H-1B visas — even those who are self-important and obnoxious. America has never and never will become stronger or more competitive by starving itself of talent. And no mindless belief in American exceptionalism will make that true.