Elon Musk causes stir with post insulting American tech workers, supporting H-1B visas

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Dec 27, 2024

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Trump administration adviser Elon Musk angered MAGA supporters with his approval of a social media post sarcastically explaining that immigrants are needed for tech jobs because U.S. workers aren’t qualified enough.

Using the X social media platform owned by Musk, an account called Autism Capital summed up the debate over H-1B visas allowing U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialized fields, saying traditional American conservatives want tech jobs but complain they aren’t getting adequate training to do them.

According to Autism Capital, the viewpoint of tech-forward Republicans is that those people are too mentally impaired to be trained.

“That pretty much sums it up,” Musk responded to the Thursday night post, which used a pejorative term for the mentally challenged.

Musk himself was raised in South Africa and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. His response kicked off a spirited debate among critics including right-wing influencer Nick Fuentes, who’s spoken of losing support for Donald Trump because he believes the president-elect isn’t harsh enough on foreigners and immigrants.

“The ‘Tech Bro’ donors are Left of Nikki Haley on immigration. Let that sink in,” Fuentes posted on Friday.

Autism Capital’s post also claimed the immigrant debate — which was largely fueled by comments made by Musk collaborator Vivek Ramaswamy — proved “some people *really* don’t like Indians.”

Ramaswamy, born to Indian immigrant parents, was appointed by Trump to help Musk run a department studying government spending. He wrote in a lengthy pro H-1B visa post Thursday morning that “the reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans (is because) American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote, saying American children should be spending more time in math tutoring, science competitions and extracurriculars versus watching TV and “hanging out at the mall.”

“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he concluded. “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 a–es handed to us by China.”

Ramaswamy’s comments attracted an online firestorm with racist overtones.