Summary
Elon Musk faced backlash from his followers on X after advocating for importing “super talented engineers” to address a shortage in the U.S. tech industry.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
Critics argued there’s sufficient U.S. talent being overlooked or underpaid, with some pointing to widespread tech layoffs.
Musk dismissed claims of low wages or training gaps, maintaining a need for exceptional engineering talent to advance innovation.
What is so incredible is that the education system in the US is so fucked that so so so so SO many high skill, high education jobs need to be brought in from overseas. Meanwhile Elon just wants to fuck over the education system in the US even more.
The reason why he wants to bring in foreign labor is, in all likelihood, to make his employees more easily controlled. Expats are less likely to raise a fuss about their living conditions and may not have much of a connection to the political movements around them to take part in protests. Also if those employees have their visa’s dependent entirely on the whims of their employer, if they DO get uppity in any way, they can face almost immediate deportation upon being fired.
In short, he does not give a fuck about Americans. It is 100% about control and exploitation.
And what happens to us who were born here? Where are we supposed to go when all the jobs that we could fill are being taken by H1Bs and Optimus robots?
We are all meant to go fuck ourselves.
these immigrants are not taking the jobs that most Americans work. high-skilled Indians and Chinese are filling shortages in engineering, doctors, etc. vast majority of Americans are not competing with these groups
Eh, doubtful except in very niche areas, perhaps. It’s more likely Americans are not willing to work like indentured servants like H-1Bs are forced into.
If there is a real need to trot the globe to scout for rare talent that we cannot source here, why the ruse of the H-1B program? Why not just offer people full citizenship with no strings attached to any corporate entity?
I don’t believe Elon’s post was exclusively about H1B, please correct me if I’m mistaken.
As for my experience, it’s hard to find Americans to fill certain types of jobs. They are not as motivated to work. My hiring experience is more in low-skilled work, but I’ve witnessed at a company I was a part of before at just how hard it was to find qualified chemists.
I personally support this.
Was it hard to find those workers, or hard to find workers willing to work for what the company was offering? “Nobody wants to work :(” is an extremely common refrain of companies offering $0.35/hr and getting no bites.
Immigrants. Expats is a classist term.