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December 27, 2024 - 5:00pm
Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he is appointing Indian-born tech executive Sriram Krishnan as a senior AI advisor has opened a rift between the President-elect’s populist base and his newfound Silicon Valley allies. The Chennai-born Krishnan, who helped reshape Twitter (now X) under top Trump backer Elon Musk, rose through Silicon Valley’s elite circles, mirroring the broader success of Indian immigrants in American tech. But it also represents everything Trump’s base once railed against: a global technocrat who advocates for expanded skilled immigration.
Yet Trump himself has been telegraphing this shift for months, telling tech investors in June that he wants to give green cards to foreign graduates automatically upon completion of their degrees. “What I want to do, and what I will do, is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he declared on the All-In podcast. The statement reveals an uncomfortable truth about Trump’s second-term calculus: he appears willing to risk alienating his immigration-restrictionist supporters in exchange for tech industry backing.
The appointment drew immediate backlash from MAGA influencers, with fringe firebrand Laura Loomer leading the charge against what she deemed a betrayal of Trump’s America First agenda. Support came from the likes of Ann Coulter (who had previously told then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy she wouldn’t vote for him because he was Indian). Some notable Republicans quickly amplified these concerns, including former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who argued on X that “there is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. We should be investing and prioritising in Americans, not foreign workers.”
This tension spotlights a unique challenge for both the populist and tech-aligned Right: how to reconcile America First nationalism with the reality that Indian-Americans represent one of the highest-achieving immigrant groups in US history, particularly in technology and engineering. Elon Musk attempted to thread this needle, comparing skilled immigration to professional sports: “This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA.”
Enter Indian-American Ramaswamy, the DOGE czar, who attempted to defend the appointment with a lengthy discourse on American cultural mediocrity. In a remarkable series of posts that betrayed his own disconnect from that culture, Ramaswamy argued that US companies hire foreign-born engineers not due to discrimination, but because jock-centric American society “venerates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ”. It celebrates characters like Saved by the Bell’s Zack Morris over its resident nerd Screech Powers, he claimed.
The irony in Ramaswamy’s pop culture references hasn’t gone unnoticed. His dismissal of 1980s uber-nerd Family Matters television character Steve Urkel as an emblem of nerd scorn overlooks how that character ultimately transforms into the ultra-cool Stefan Urquelle. This suggests, perhaps, what many Americans really want are native-born boy masterminds who can also transform themselves into reasonable facsimiles of real tough guys. Ramaswamy’s prescription of “more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers” and “more weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons” misreads the deeper cultural dynamics at play.
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SubscribeWell, Trump is right about this, as he is on most economic issues. Immigration should be managed with a focus on attracting the world’s best talent and not on gerrymandering, as it was under Biden and still is in the UK.
Oh, for goodness sake writer, can you not think? There’s a huge difference between advocating for high-skilled techies (and other professionals) being given rights to live and work in the US, and the “open borders” policy that’s been extant under Biden.
The first are a positive influence, those arriving across the Mexican border a complete drain on resources and cultural standards. Please learn the difference.
Same goes for the UK, and those arriving via illegal Channel crossings, when migrants wishing to contribute positively to the UK are more than welcome.
In the UK the numbers crossing the Channel are minuscule compared to those arriving on student visas, many of whom simply end up as deliveroo drivers anyway.
You can have work visas for migrants who secure work in skilled industries (although that’s often just an excuse for industry to avoid paying the going rate for those skills or paying to train the staff they need), but blindly handing out residency visas for anybody passing through uni is a fools game
But this is almost the exact same thing as open borders. You’re only vetting for people who can afford to fly here. There needs to be more scrutiny of student visas as well. We don’t need kids trying to get an Art’s degree.
I agree, it’s simply a back door version of the free movement laws that people rejected in the EU referendum.
Can’t have industry having to pay higher wages now can we?
Fair enough, but I think the writer is noting the inability of Trump’s America First base to discern the difference.
Daniel,
The author is the one too stupid to discern the difference. And possibly yourself as well. Underrating MAGA seems to be a popular fallacy. Frankly I hope the status quo continues pursuing their fallacies as long as possible.
Right because your political opponents can never just disagree with you. They always have to be suffering from cognitive deficiency or “false consciousness.”
Is this true though?
They can think, they’re just using a train of logic that is based on faulty premises. Their logic is apparent. Logically speaking, their thinking goes like this opposition to immigration = racism, therefore supporting immigration = not racism, therefore there is no distinction between high skilled and low skilled immigration where race is a the only revelavant distinction. It follows logically that a person who opposes opening the borders to poor oppressed non-white migrants will also oppose opening the borders to well educated non-white professionals. There is no logical difference because the most important factors are race and racism.
We can all see what’s wrong with this. The initial premise is faulty. Opposition to immigration /= racism. Rather than actually listen to people articulate their reasoned anti-immigration viewpoints, the open borders crowd simply call them racists and dismiss them. It’s intellectual and political laziness and betrays a prejudice that is little better than racism itself. It deserved to lose the election on those grounds alone quite frankly.
The sad thing is how many people are playing into this so easily. Nikki Haley is playing right into it, trying to gain traction by taking the tack that we should somehow keep out skilled workers and somehow train more Americans that may or may not exist or be inferior. Logically speaking, asserting that we should prefer Americans for these jobs even if they’re less qualified is actually racist, or at least nationalist, which is what the opposition loves to accuse MAGA of being at every possible juncture. Further, if that is to be our attitude, of hoarding technical skill and knowledge, why do we allow foreign students to come into the US at all? Shouldn’t we be keeping them here.ensuring they won’t go back to their own countries and take their skills and knowledge with them? It’s just absurd. The opposition to MAGA continues to show how little respect they have for the actual voters. They regard them as simple minded sheep, and that’s why they’re losing. The longer it keeps up, the worse it will get for them.
“opened a rift between the President-elect’s populist base and his newfound Silicon Valley allies.” Nikki Haley is scarcely representative of Trump’s populist base.
His populist base is for the most part against the flood of low skill illegal immigrants that will be a net cost to them and serve to suppress wages. They don’t care so much about woke high tech workers facing a bit more competition from Indian origin high tech workers who will be net tax contributors and might generate jobs. Seems to make the sort of sense you don’t need a PhD to understand.
The European Left’s interpretation of American Populism is flawed and there seems to be no desire to correct the misinterpretation. Unlike the European Right, the American Right is not inherently collectivist. It’s not a homogeneous groupthink solidarity alliance. There are a wide range of opinions.
European Leftists only explanation for why many American normies are generally unbothered by extreme wealth is that they possess something like “false consciousness.” In other words, these normies don’t understand their own interests. Likewise, being against pointless wars does not automatically conflate to an “isolationist” worldview.
The immigration debate is much the same. Most normies are not against well structured immigration that grows GDP. The issue is with unfettered mass immigration that uses no discernment about who is entering.
That said, I know the Narrative about Populism always being a class war is a sacred cow of Left-Wing thought so I don’t expect any reevaluation.
If he accomplishes nothing else, Trump will have done us a great service by murdering a few sacred cows of politics and proving them less than sacred after all. May his murderous rage against cattle of questionable divinity continue throughout his rein and may the cause of totemic bovine slaughter be carried on by others after his reign is ended.
Great post
Ramaswamy’s comments are out there for sure, but I think most populist supporters are not opposed to immigration. They are opposed to open borders and mass immigration. Highly-skilled tech workers are the people we should be targeting. At least that’s how I feel. We need immigration, but based on a points system. Entering the US legally is a remarkably difficult process. I know a couple people who moved here to Alberta because getting a green card was almost impossible.
Millions of H1B visas over the last few decades, mostly for Indian workers, to depress wages of local labor. Millions of them turned into citizens.
Cultural change at work where Indian labor dominates already visible. Indian run firms reluctant to hire non Indian labor. Culture change at large is yet to come as Indian ethnic group grows in numbers.
Ethnic, cultural, racial diversity can add to divisiveness. Time will tell if we humans can overcome tribalism. In the long run the Melting pot concept may or may not work as whites become a minority.
Similarly for low wage Latino labor that migrates through Mexico.
CEOs care to reduce labor cost. Low and high wage labor. Politicians that need millions in donations to run for office are happy to oblige.
The future for the current local population in America may not be a good one. Time will tell.
Or, maybe he understands that skilled laborers benefit the nations where they settle because they start companies, hire employees, shop, live, and pay taxes. They are the opposite of unskilled migrants fleeing social problems in their own countries only to unintentionally cause more problems in their new ones. Attracting skilled workers is one of the best arguments for free and open socieities. If creative and productive people want to live in the US rather than China, it will make the US stronger and China weaker as time passes. The German scientists who fled Nazi Germany helped the US build the A-bomb. The skilled are always fewer in number than the unskilled, so there isn’t a similar clash of cultures. Further, they tend to immigrate as individuals, rather than families, which should also be preferred.
The immediate push back is largely a result of the way American media works. There’s an element of throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks. It goes back to the early days of talk radio when men like Rush Limbaugh made careers out of finding some angle that resonated with people to criticize politicians and then kept pounding on it as a way to get attention and make money. Find a few angles that work and hammer away relentlessly. Discard what doesn’t work. Trump himself engages in this. At one time in his campaign he tried to take credit for the COVID vaccine and take a pro-vaccine stance. He got booed at his own rally and never mentioned it again. Now we have RFK in charge of reforming health care. I have little faith in Donald J. Trump to make sound judgements about geopolitical strategy, military preparedness, economics, or nearly any other intellectual topic, but I expect he will continue to excel at the one thing he does well, reading the temperature and mood of the room he’s in and triangulating the best approach to keep his core supporters behind him.
Having just won a decisive victory, Trump’s popularity and power are probably at their overall zenith. Now is the time for Trump’s enemies, both the Democrats and the old guard Republicans, to start slinging mud to see if they can get something to stick or drive a wedge in his winning coalition. I doubt it will work because Trump will just change his mind if it suits him to do so. He’s never had any plan or firm policy of his own. 90% of his platform comes from popular sentiments that he had the temerity to actually say out loud, much to the consternation of elites and media. If this skilled immigration push detracts from the movement, he’ll just backtrack and move on to something else. I’m not at all shocked to see the likes of Nikki Haley taking shots to try to drive a wedge into the MAGA movement. The establishment stooge will do anything, including playing overtly to racism, to get the Republican party back under elite control.
It’s a bit early to say whether this criticism will find much purchase with actual voters, especially as far out as two years from now. Populists oppose open borders, not immigration per se. This author falls into the trap of assuming that immigration opposition is driven by some level of racism. There certainly is an element of that in some voters, but it’s been vastly overstated by the MSM since 2016. People are complex and can have nuanced views, yes, even those who don’t have a college education. They do understand the difference between Japanese/Korean/Indian systems analysts, engineers, and doctors and the stream of unskilled migrants fleeing failed societies and corrupt governments in Central and South America. These are apples and watermelons. A few may see the first as a ‘problem’, but they all agree the latter is the more pressing problem. I personally doubt whether the voters at the ground level will even draw the line from A to B and link the migrant problem with this skilled immigrant policy in the first place. I rather doubt they gave much thought to whether those skilled workers find immigration easy or difficult. Most of them probably assumed that skilled workers would find it very easy to get into the USA given how easy it is for the unskilled. Some of them may be finding out America’s immigration policy is actually stupider than they realized.
I, on the other hand, already knew. About twenty years ago when I graduated college, there were a few German exchange students who wanted to stay in the US and start their own company. Surprise, they couldn’t get green cards and went back to Germany. This is something that stuck with me for a long time as the height of stupidity. These were smart people, the best of my class by far. Who knows what benefits they could have had to this region and this country had they been allowed to stay. I felt it unfair that these guys who had followed all the laws and came to study in the US weren’t allowed to stay but any schmo could just walk across the Rio Grande, thumb their noses at the law and the country, and be allowed to stay because of some misguided sense of sympathy. Utter insanity is what it is, and it needs to stop. It needed to stop two decades ago, and sadly, it still does.
I fully expect Trump to do what he can to stop the flow of unskilled migrants into the US and maybe, god willing, deport some of the ones that are here. It’s been a major pillar of his campaign and platform. If he actually goes through with it, it will have a profound effect by sending a message that running to America isn’t the way to solve your problems. It will also signal to all the intermediary countries that they’re going to have to deal with the problem on their end as well. I confess to being more than a little surprised he’s even making an attempt at reforming immigration on all levels. I think this article is an exercise in looking for cracks in the Trump coalition. Personally I don’t see it, but maybe if one hates the MAGA movement and squints hard enough, they can will this minor quibble into being some sign of fatal structural weakness that will bring down the movement.
I don’t think excellence and enjoyment are mutually exclusive but excellence requires sacrifice and hard work and a certain amount of discomfort over a long period of time before you get to enjoy the fruits of your work and kick back a bit.
Don’t knock Asian tiger parenting: how else did Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, Usha Vance et al get so far in their lives?
If we really are only talking about ‘elite’ high skills STEM workers here, just look how many Nobel prize scientists India have had – three. Much smaller countries in Western Europe have had lots more, let alone the US.
It’s really interesting that we’re talking about race in the context of America because of its history. This conversation highlights how deeply the American political system is rooted in race and racism. Otherwise, why would we even be discussing racism and Indian-Americans? This is not a topic that would have been widely discussed in the past, so it’s worth pointing out for obvious reasons. We need to reframe this issue when it comes to the Indian-American group, whether we’re talking about skilled immigrants or open borders, and perhaps approach it with a different perspective. That’s the first point.
The second point is that the reason we’re seeing pushback responses from this group and their allies is that this is what happens when any group is pushed into a corner. Historically, it may have been deemed acceptable to push Black Americans into a corner by perpetuating narratives that suggested something was fundamentally wrong with them, in order to keep them in a certain position. Whether one agrees with that or not, the history is well-documented. However, applying the same language and tactics to a highly skilled and highly intelligent group with their own countries ( China or India)—many of whom came here to invest and build opportunities—will not work.
It’s important to note that many wealthy immigrants come to America not solely for education (that is what is allowed )but for the freedom to open private businesses, including banks and private equity firms, opportunities that are often restricted in their home countries which also their govt support ( we do not ask deep questions).That’s a significant reason why they choose to immigrate. If we begin treating them as if they are in the same position as Black Americans historically were—cornered and undermined—it’s bound to backfire.
What’s even more interesting is that we’re already seeing aggressive reactions to the language being used toward this group. I’m not sure what will happen if this continues, but it will certainly be fascinating to observe how this dynamic unfolds.
The comparison of skilled vs unskilled is also interesting dynamic of group vs another group is perpetual racism conversation. Something dangerous and yet interesting is emerging.
Just another example of the unravelling to come. The coalition of Billionaire immigrant Tech Bros and the visceral MAGA was never going to last long. The key thing is which way will Trumpster lean? He doesn’t need the MAGA again to get re-elected, and who’s got money he v much likes so…
But he’ll also want to put egos Elon and Vivek in their place too. Watch DOGE deliver little and the Tech Bros shoulder the blame. Cunning but predictable.
Vivek has never got over the fact that the football players at his school got the pretty girls, while the only thing he kissed was the locker doors
The shallowness and unoriginality of the critics of MAGA is very relable.
I have been a fan of Trump back in 2015 when the likes of Musk were supporting democrats. Just don’t care for tech oligarchs with their hatred of normal people and their self-serving justifications for wanting to import Indians into western countries
As Vivek shows, Indian professionals do fit in rather well. Legal immigration of highly educated professionals only helps us.
And the majority vote democrat
Probably correct, so he channeled his anger and resentment into the making of money and political power, so now a few years later he gets all the girls he wants. That both the jocks who excel in high school hallways and the nerds who put their resentment into their money and careers are equally shallow and equally unworthy of admiration never occurs to anybody…..
Except me apparently, as I had understood, identified, and categorically rejected both these paths as narcissistic and dependent upon the recognition of others for validation. I have regretted many decisions in life. I have never regretted not participating in this particular p***ing contest. Always seemed petty and trivial to me, a juvenile mindset for those that never grow past the age of fifteen in mind or spirit, never mind the misogyny of treating women as objects of comparative achievement. Hard pass on all of this nonsense.
This is a problem with imposing term limits on leaders. With no chance of reelection, Trump no longer has to worry about the interests of the electorate that voted for him, and now seems beholden to the vested interests that helped fund his election victory.
Unfortunately I think a large number of his supporters are going to be disappointed by the end of his second term
We didn’t vote for a class war, Billy Bob.
You’re going to get one though. The only difference will be that in Britain it’s the old money with outsized influence, in America it’s new money and tech oligarchs
All these complaints about “oligarchs” and “plutocrats” mask the real enemies of Socialism; the productive peasantry. You might recall in the USSR these people were known as Kulaks.
Socialism or the “caring and sharing” economy is bankrolled by billionaires that are committed to reducing competition by appeasing the less productive peasantry. Socialists call for “tax hikes” on the oppressive overlords and “debt relief” for the oppressed underclass.
Trump cut income taxes and my disposable income went up. Biden waived student loan debt but didn’t reimburse me for paying off my loans. So one President rewarded workers and other rewarded people regardless of their work. So who are the real Oppressors and Oppressed? I favor the person that doesn’t punish productivity.
Tell me, how does importing cheap labour from Asia reward productivity or make the average man richer? Who benefits from such a scenario except the already wealthy?
Income tax cuts paid for by increasing the national deficit are also stupid, as any small gain is will cost you many times over further down the track
We’re not talking about cheap labor here. We’re talking about engineers. The people with the brain power and concentration to focus on extremely complex wide scale projects. Did you read the article?
Cheaper than training your own engineers I suppose
Why would it be cheaper? You’ve completely lost the plot. These engineers would be paid at the top of the scale because they’re the best in the world. You’re arguing against brilliance.
No I’m not, I’m arguing against Trumps exact words.
“What I want to do, and what I will do, is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,”
He made no mention of only giving residency to high earners, he said he’d give visas to whoever completed a degree in the States, and as we’ve seen in Britain this simply becomes a back door route to residency for Uber drivers.
Nope. In both countries the societal conflict is with those who despise their citizens and the citizens.
Wasn’t Ramaswamy criticising the citizens of America, implying he prefers imports from Asia in this very article?
Nope. In both countries the societal conflict is with those who despise their citizens vs the citizens.
Good luck using that as a wedge issue. Maga people are all for skilled, lawful immigration. Confabulating otherwise is ignorant.
Awwww…the reactionaries can only vote down, not engage. As expected, frankly
Lol