Politicians hit back at Vivek Ramaswamy on Thursday for arguing American culture is to blame for a lack of U.S.-born engineers.
“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley asserted.
“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.”
Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and co-chair of the incoming Department of Government Efficiency under President-elect Trump, argued that Silicon Valley’s reliance on foreign-born engineers stems from cultural failings in the United States.
“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 said Thursday.
“This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up.”
The debate underscores a larger ideological divide among conservatives over immigration policies, particularly in high-tech industries.
While Haley and others in the GOP emphasize prioritizing American workers, tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ramaswamy argue that immigration of highly skilled workers is vital for maintaining U.S. competitiveness.
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” Musk wrote on X Wednesday.
“HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
This argument has sparked friction even among conservatives who broadly support President-elect Trump’s hardline immigration policies, including mass deportations.
Tech executives have increasingly found themselves at odds with other Republicans, advocating for policies that allow for the recruitment of top international talent while supporting Trump’s broader immigration agenda.
Haley’s latest comments reflect her ongoing defense of American workers and culture, which she sees as critical to the nation’s success.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy and Musk are positioning themselves as proponents of a pragmatic approach to immigration tailored to meet the needs of the tech industry.
I feel that the education system has failed several generations of students. They have been coddled and brainwashed so much that they are not good employees nor do they have the education that matches which other countries have. Thus, America has to import very intelligent and educated people to do the hard jobs. Wish it wasn’t so, but the facts are there.
This is also a reflection on the kind of professors U.S. colleges hire. They came up through a system where the people that become college level educators are nothing of kind. Most professors rarely ever enter even a lecture hall today. They are all busy trying to fulfill their “publishing” requirements. The students are instructed by TA’s. Every professor must do the job of teaching that they were hired to do. Put your 40 hour week in the classrooms and not drinking coffee in the faculty lounges.
A big part of the problem is that American prospective college students and their parents have allowed themselves to be conned into borrowing fortunes to matriculate their kids through much-easier-than-engineering curricula that have little prospect of offering well-paid careers. (The Sputnik event is very appropriately referenced here, too.)
I worked in the IT industry for over 36 years. At one point I was responsible for reviewing the resumes of candidates from India. I found that most all resumes were full of lies and greatly embellished with regard to their education and experience levels. The Indian agencies that deal with these people are basically “SCAMMERS”. When reviewing the resumes and then speaking with the candidates it was obvious 90% of the resumes were frauds. There we men maybe 21 years old who all claimed to have college degrees and many years of experience managing large project teams. In reality they had the equivalent of a high-school education and learned everything they knew about IT / computer from a CD home study course provided by the employment agency. When they get to the U.S. thyt can’t perform much of anything with constant monitoring and supervision. They could code a program but it was like they never ever learned how to thoroughly test the programs. What is so sad about this is we could train our own U.S. citizens much better than what these allegedly experienced people have to offer. The H1B Visa program has been a government scam ever since it was started.