DARON ACEMOGLU
Fissures within US President-elect Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” coalition have appeared sooner than expected. By the end of December, the tech-billionaire wing was in open warfare with MAGA’s nativist wing over America’s H-1B visa program, which enables US businesses to employ some 600,000 skilled foreigners per year on a temporary basis.
Speaking for the billionaires, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (a top H-1B employer), argues that, “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Likewise, Vivek Ramaswamy, another tech billionaire advising Trump, claims that US companies need H-1B workers because, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer).” In response, MAGA activists like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon – but also democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders – countered that the program helps large US corporations at the expense of American workers.
Who’s right? While economic research makes clear that immigrants bring sought-after skills, creative dynamism, and useful knowledge that also helps domestic innovators, that doesn’t mean there is no downside to heavy reliance on H-1B visas. For example, the argument that the H-1B program helps employers secure STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills ignores the fact that if there were no such program, US educational institutions would feel greater pressure from business to address this need.
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