Far-right activists clashed online with billionaire Elon Musk and other supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the need for a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a lifeblood for Silicon Valley.
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I'm not sure that the right wing oligarchs behind Donald Trump are ever going to understand the irony of this. They need to keep Americans stupid enough to vote for them then import workers from countries like India because they have a better education system than Americans.
Amazing how MAGA is suddenly waking up to the fact that VP trump and his President Musk, cannot be trusted. One wonders if they have been asleep this entire time.
Traitors get what’s deserved. Trump is loyal only to himself and the carpetbaggers with MONEY 💴 retribution Trump needed a MAGA base of unquestioned loyalty to keep his corrupt behind out of jail. MAGA’s vote HATE while Trump prepares to TAKE.
Votes matter, MAGA feel the pain.
It's not about skilled workers. It's about paying less to equally skilled workers and making them a workhorse for 6 years so they can't just quit and go to another job. Working on H1B visa is not as easy they make it sound. Companies need to sponsor them and not many companies have resources/budget
Excellent points + the college education needed for these jobs is unaffordable - MAGA doesn’t want to help w/student loan debt and yet US workers are losing jobs to foreign nationals due to insufficient credentials. Who wins in this scenario? US Corporations & wealthy stockholders - not US workers
Right. For giggles, maga should propose a change to H1B rules and make them super easy to switch jobs and make it more flexible. You'll see how quickly Musk will change his strategy.
Far Right ideologues always end up ‘eating’ each other. It’s what keeps me optimistic for the future even when the immediate future is looking pretty glum.
I think you are all missing the silver lining in this article. The good news is that by eliminating the Department of Education & putting the Ten Commandments in schools, we are going to create the perfect workforce to replace immigrants that work the hardest/lowest paying jobs & making rich richer.
It has not been a lifeblood!!! 🩸🩸🩸
It has been something they have done out of grief 🤑 and the opportunity to treat people like shit.💩
Stop playing their game 💀
Unfortunately, they hit the nail on the head. America emphasizes extracurricular activities and stupid jocks over math and science, period! I am amazed at the inferior level of college graduates in this country. Community colleges are teaching what should have been learned in F high school!
They're going to deport millions of Latino immigrant workers & bring in Indian & Chinese immigrants that they will fast track to citizenship & make GOP voters.
Even though Indian Americans here tend to vote Dem, a trend was seen in the 2024 election, of an increase in Indian males voting Trump.
These large corporations bring in engineers and programmers from India and China because it’s cheaper than paying American wages. I saw it happen in my company. IT started out all American and ended up almost all Indian employees. It’s all about squeezing out higher profit margin.
When they’re here on a work visa they can’t vote anyway.
They import cheaper labor, Americans can’t get the jobs after graduation so they stop enrolling in the majors, and there’s the shortage that they’ve deliberately created. Now they’re starting to offshore other jobs like accounting too.
Accounting and consulting has long been offshored. I work with offshore professionals and I am consistently impressed with their professionalism, work ethic and quality.
They are wonderful, intelligent, kind and very knowledgeable people. We don’t deserve the work if we can’t compete. Shame on us.
It has nothing to do with competence or professionalism. It has to do with companies looking for cheap labor overseas because they don’t want to pay US workers wages. It’s about greed and taking the profits saved to pay the CEO’s exorbitant salaries and benefits.
Respectfully, you’re wrong. My kid just graduated with a CS degree. He is competing with new immigrants and foreign grad students. These people are absolutely stellar. Whether onshore and offshore. Superior early education and work ethic. Average in America doesn’t cut it. Compete or fail.
Yep, I’m in IT. I saw it at the last 3 places I worked. One town the Indian workers couldn’t afford cars so they rented “rooms”(not apartments) and walked to work
Why, indeed, let's deport all undocumented migrants and stop giving foreign nationals work visas. That'll show them! When prices soar, surely they won't affect the non-billionaire Magats.
More Republicans are finding out today that they’ve been conned by the America-hating Republican Party elite, which wants to replace American workers with foreigners so billionaires now in charge of government can get richer and more powerful.
The biggest problem with the far-right is that they always look back and see only pink shimmers. They are more Woke than those who are Woke. If they look forward, they see a black flag and a crazy man who calls himself Trump
So musk and the other guy are for allowing skilled labor in but think that manual labor is going to magically happen without unskilled labor to work the fields, pick fruits and vegetables and do the things that would not get done otherwise. All stable geniuses
President Musk seems to prefer doing business with totalitarian regimes. The slave laborers from Xinjiang are much less troublesome than American workers.
Now he just need to use US military to annex the Panama Canal so he get cheaper rates for shipping his China built Tesla 3s to the east coast.
This is the brilliance of Trump ... Convincing halfwits to vote for him and against their best interest ... Christians voted for lying godless rapist, poor against safety net and for tariff increased prices, sick against Obama care, small businesses/farmers/contractors against cheap labor...
Trump didn’t win this election!!!! It was bought and fixed by Musk! I hope on Inauguration Day there’s a huge plan to nullify his win! He’s a liar and a FELON
Not intentionally, he did not ... But he did, unintentionally/ luckily, get more votes than the other candidate ... When I said the brilliance of Trump I did not mean that the halfwit classless clown was brilliant
What’s the point of a media company posting article’s on social media, but hiding it behind a paywall ? If you feel it’s interesting enough to appeal to potential readers, let us read it before trying to extort them. At least Costco give free samples then pick your pocket!
They're trying to drum up support for subscriptions, like a preview. That's why.
Me? I cancelled my subscription to the WaPo over their open support for Trump, such as their editorial praising Musk and the "DOGE" initiative to cut Social Security & Medicare to fund more tax cuts for billionaires.
I thought the chink in the armor of draconian immigration deportation was the agriculture and construction trades. Who would have guessed Silicon Valley would thrown their hat into the ring? Wonder how many other sectors also rely on immigrant brain or brawn?
As predicted, a GOP immigration program with exemptions for “loyal” corporations in exchange for “voluntary” blackmail or outright bribery payments from the affected industries. A problem created by the Trump administration, that only Trump himself can fix. A familiar tune.
The only good thing about the next 4 years will be the sheer entertainment value of watching the Republican electorate lose their minds as it dawns on them how they’ve completely screwed themselves.
The more I hear ppl say this, the less I think it isn't going to happen. Similar to all the "Trump will go to prison" or "Latinos will turn their backs on Trump" or "The Mueller Report will be the end of Trump" type predictions made over and over about Trump that didn't come true.
Apparently you’re not aware of the MAGA battle today with DOGE (Vivek and Musk) insisting that it’s a good idea to hire immigrants for tech jobs, so Laura Loomer is stirring the pot with exposing what they’re paying them, and why they’ll try and replace American workers.
I am aware and yes there will be fighting but MAGA swallows whatever Trump puts in their mouth. He will come out and give some word soup speech about he has the best plan, Elon isn't president but is a smart guy, and that he's still going to deport a lot of people. And they will forget about this.
You’re apparently unfamiliar with literally every other plank in his platform if you think this is the only way Trump voters are going to get screwed under a President Trump.
With the exception of tariffs, everything else he wants to do are slow burns. He won't even be in office by time the negative effects come to fruition.
But he will make them feel good with tax cuts and the illusion of cutting govt waste.
From the article: Loomer falsely describing Indians as “third world invaders” with low IQs, while saying it is fueling a “civil war” between Trump’s far-right base and the “tech bros”
Nikki Haley defends Loomer while Vance whose wife is Indian American remains silent.
You can't have highly skilled tech workers in your own population when you've done everything you can to destroy public education and private school kids aren't going to school for STEM degrees - they're going to school for business and entrepreneurship degrees.
While I feel the H1B program needs to be reexamined, it's important to remember that if the smartest engineers work for US firms, then we are denying our enemies the smartest engineers.
On April 23, 1980, during a national debate, Ronald Reagan publicly advocated for the free flow of #migrant workers from #Mexico to come and work in America. He also argued that the border between the US and México be open. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyOK5kGf4jU
It will be very interesting to watch them toe the line between “Make America Great with American Workers” and “Make America Great with People of Equal Talent Who Will Work for Less Pay”
Hey WaPo, please remove the Twitter tracker (?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social) when we share your links received on Bluesky.
Don't make me feel dirty.
The reason that the high tech companies like using immigrants is that will work for less $ and, if the company fires them, they have a short time to get another similar job or run the risk of being deported. So the company makes more money and has leverage that it wouldn't over an American.
Perfect example of the 1% vs the 99%. The 1% are for populist policies as long as they align with them getting the cheapest wages possible, they oppose when they know they might lose $1
Now WaPo report on the real issue, that billionaire, Elon Musk, backed by President elect Trump, will try to silence anyone on his platform who goes against his own plans. The peoples voices didn't matter to Trump and they never will.
Instead of educating Americans Elmo wants to import people from India to take high paying tech jobs and then advocating to deport people who do the jobs no Americans want. Wait til the magats find out the Indians are actually brown people.
And none of the right wingers apparently can explain how defunding schools and making college impossible to access is suddenly going to turn into an abundance of American-born tech workers.
This is inaccurate. H1B visas are for skilled workers with at least a bachelor’s degree. Companies sponsoring skilled workers thru H1B are require to pay at least the prevailing wage for the position that they would pay a citizen for the same position.
This fails to acknowledge that the solution to this rule is to keep hiring H1Bs, and slowly ratchet down that “prevailing wage” with cheap labor. This is what has been happening for the last 20 years. Now Americans won’t work at that wage because it won’t pay the bills.
It's because the conservatives have placed zero value in education. Scratch that, they've convinced their followers there is no value in education because if you look at some of the top conservatives bios, it's littered with Ivy league educations.
In 1940, America had 42 workers per retiree. Today, we only have 3! The population is aging. We need as many non-criminal immigrants as possible to come, work, pay into the tax base and earn their way I to citizenship. More asylum judges and vetting needed ASAP!
This is a needed discussion. Truth is, America needs MORE immigrants than we currently have, not fewer. We don't have a large enough labor force to support the needs of the country, especially to pay for Social Security and Medicare. These programs will go busy if we don't increase the tax base.
An immigrant is standing up for immigration. No way. I guarantee you it’s only because he can get away with paying them less. Nothing but a selfish putz.
If @washingtonpost.com is referring to Musk, he ruthlessly controls X access. He used X as his bullhorn. He has become the platform of chaos and disinformation. Sometimes it works and other times it has failed. Don’t be surprise if X becomes irrelevant. Fx, Brazil
Comments
Votes matter, MAGA feel the pain.
When Trump and Elon split it’s gonna be YUGE.
Never.
It has been something they have done out of grief 🤑 and the opportunity to treat people like shit.💩
Stop playing their game 💀
https://youtu.be/vWTfG7w_pfc?si=2MUQonCteZMfRajv
Even though Indian Americans here tend to vote Dem, a trend was seen in the 2024 election, of an increase in Indian males voting Trump.
They import cheaper labor, Americans can’t get the jobs after graduation so they stop enrolling in the majors, and there’s the shortage that they’ve deliberately created. Now they’re starting to offshore other jobs like accounting too.
They are wonderful, intelligent, kind and very knowledgeable people. We don’t deserve the work if we can’t compete. Shame on us.
Awokening…?’
He's not even in office yet, and he's throwing American workers under the bus to bring in cheap foreign workers to take American jobs.
. . .and his supporters are realizing they've been played.
- President Elon calls MAGA voters morons
- Chief Helper Trump stares at the Sun again to see where the eclipse went
- No one reads WP headlines since the rag is owned by a coward
Now he just need to use US military to annex the Panama Canal so he get cheaper rates for shipping his China built Tesla 3s to the east coast.
Me? I cancelled my subscription to the WaPo over their open support for Trump, such as their editorial praising Musk and the "DOGE" initiative to cut Social Security & Medicare to fund more tax cuts for billionaires.
#FAFO
“Let’s get ready to Crrrumble!”
But he will make them feel good with tax cuts and the illusion of cutting govt waste.
Nikki Haley defends Loomer while Vance whose wife is Indian American remains silent.
We’ve destroyed public education and made higher education unaffordable for many. If we can’t compete then shame on us. We reap what we sow.
That's all they really care about.
President Musk: I know, but we have to get the votes from somewhere.
Don't make me feel dirty.
We must #Resist ✊
#BlueCrew 💙🗽🇺🇲
So is Donald, btw. And your owner is licking Trump’s taint.
January 6th was pointed at whoever was seen as "in power".
They're catching on to the whole wealth disparity thing.
Note to Ma and Pa. Hope the sex is worth it. This is rape not love.
There are a limited number of people with tech skills that companies worldwide compete to hire, even countries with free education.