Ukraine faces decisive months ahead as key allies gear up for crunch elections. While early presidential campaigning in the US and a looming general election in Poland will grab the international headlines, a snap election in Slovakia on 30 September may prove every bit as consequential. 

With Robert Fico — Slovakia’s former prime minister and one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Ukrainian war effort — poised to win the vote, a change of government in Bratislava could have a profound effect on EU policymaking. Fico has promised that if his party makes it into government “we will not send a single bullet to Ukraine,” proudly proclaiming that “I allow myself to have a different opinion to that of the United States” on the war.  

Fico has also claimed on the campaign trail that “war always comes from the West and peace from the East,” and that “what is happening today is unnecessary killing, it is the emptying of warehouses to force countries to buy more American weapons.” Such statements have resulted in him being blacklisted by Kyiv as a spreader of Russian propaganda.  

Yet the former prime minister spearheads a new brand of Left-wing, anti-American populism that has become a powerful force in Central Europe since the war began. Perceptions that “the Americans occupy us” — as one MP in Fico’s Smer party evocatively put it — are shared with a similar groundswell of anti-Western opinion in the neighbouring Czech Republic.  

Yet Smer has been handed a chance to gain power thanks to the chaos which has engulfed Slovakia’s pro-EU, pro-Western forces. Personal grievances coupled with serious policy errors tore apart a four-party coalition formed after elections in 2020, leaving Fico to capitalise on heightened mistrust in establishment politics. Smer is expected to become the nation’s largest party after this month’s election, with an anticipated 20% of the vote.  

Whatever the specific makeup of the new government, if Smer is the largest party it will likely pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. A halt to until-now generous Slovak arms shipments to Ukraine is Fico’s central electoral pledge, while the arrival on the scene of another Orbán-style government prepared to obstruct EU aid efforts for Ukraine would create a serious headache. That is particularly the case as Brussels struggles to win support for both short and long-term war funding commitments. 

Victory for Fico would also amplify Orbán’s scepticism about the overall Western narrative on Ukraine — a scepticism which the Hungarian Prime Minister recently conveyed to Western conservatives during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Orbán portrayed Ukraine’s attempts to win back the territories taken by Russia as ultimately hopeless and claimed that Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly makes him “the man who can save the Western world”. 

Like Trump in America and Orbán in Europe, Fico is hated with a passion by establishment forces. But in Slovakia, the pro-Western establishment itself has become so mistrusted that power may soon pass to a man intent on shattering what’s left of European unity on Ukraine. 

Another Gold Rush is underway in Silicon Valley. An entire generation has been encouraged to learn to code with the same earnestness as young Americans were once encouraged to “go West” in search of the precious metal. Find the right startup and you can become a billionaire too.

Yet the shine is fading. More and more tech workers are rebelling against the use of cheap foreign labor that undercuts them. A recent investigation by RealClearInvestigations found that tech companies are increasingly using the H-1B visa program to replace American employees with lower-wage foreign workers. The article found that layoffs are happening alongside growing political pressure for proponents of the visa.

This taps into a broader problem which has allowed giant tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google to use a seemingly unlimited pool of cheap foreign labor. In the 10 years between 2015 and 2025, the number of approved H-1B visas a year has risen from 275,317 to over 400,000. Despite being legally required to use this visa group only to fill jobs for which qualified Americans couldn’t be found, in practice tech companies have fired tens of thousands of US workers while expanding the size of their H-1B visa workforces.

The most politically salient feature of this scheme is the way it undercuts the wages and jobs of US citizens. It is on behalf of the displaced American workers that the loudest cries against the H-1B have been raised. Even as the Trump administration has sought to expand other guest worker programs, it has made some initial moves to curb the controversial visa scheme — the government now requires tech employers to pay a $100,000 fee per new application. Tech companies have largely been able to work around this requirement by recruiting foreign students directly out of US universities, who are exempt from the fees. Friday’s announcement that foreign visa holders, including H-1B holders, must leave the country to apply for a Green Card could ironically keep more foreign tech workers permanently trapped on H-1B visa status, and thus dependent on their tech employers.

Yet for all of Donald Trump’s struggles to address anger without offending the tech oligarchy, Democrats don’t seem to have a plan either. There is an understandable concern that the debate slides too easily into overt bigotry. Not wishing to be associated with the perception of xenophobia leaves many on the Left uncomfortable discussing the underlying labor issues. Too many Democrats also wish to avoid angering the tech titans on whom they rely for donor support and even ideological direction.

Despite Democrats’ discomfort, the H-1B issue is clearly not going away. A generation that was told careers in the tech industry were their future is finding out there are no jobs left for them. This concern is likely to become especially pronounced among young US-born African and Latino Americans who may have otherwise benefited from efforts, including by the tech industry itself, to “diversify” the workforce. Despite Latino children making up nearly 40% of the K-12 students in Bay Area schools, Latinos make up barely 3% of the Silicon Valley tech workforce.

What is the Left’s solution? The potential for a tech workers union seems promising, especially as these employees realize they are permanent wage laborers rather than future startup founders. Yet such unionization efforts will inevitably have to reckon with the H-1B question as well. Will these workers join the union or will they be used to break it? Overcoming the vulnerability of people on H-1B visas to organize them alongside American tech employees is necessary but difficult. The Left should advocate for making it harder to hire foreign workers, but also for extending them equal working rights while they are here.

For now, those coming to America on H-1B visas are cheap to hire and easy to fire. As AI comes for all the tech jobs, there may be one final advantage for foreign workers: they can simply be deported after the mass layoffs and won’t stay in the country to offer an opposition. Maybe the tech barons have thought this through. Eventually, they may let the growing wave of anger at the industry crash down on their former employees who have come through this foreign visa program, just as soon as AI makes all tech workers redundant. They provide a convenient scapegoat, after all. It can get ugly in California when a Gold Rush ends.

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Antonio De Loera-Brust is the communications director for the United Farm Workers. Previously, he served as a special assistant to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

@AntonioDeLoeraB

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