Vivek Ramaswamy on H1B

Alan Cai

January 3, 2025

Donald Trump ended an intra-MAGA feud this week by weighing in on the H1B visa: he’s all for it. Critics from within his party — most notably political activist and Trump inner circle member Laura Loomer — have called out the president-elect for shifting his stance on the specialty operations guest worker program, which he verbally opposed but could not change during his first administration. While the H1B visa debate has largely been framed as part of the largerimmigration issue, it’s important to note that individuals granted visas under the program are considered “nonimmigrant” and are still classified as “foreign workers” according to the Department of Homeland Security. While the Trumpworld is accustomed to frequent policy changes on the whims of their Floridian leader, auxiliary acolytes are not granted as much ideological leeway, especially when seeking a higher position of influence.

Vivek Ramaswamy posted a lengthy manifesto on X last Thursday advocating for a reexamination of American culture in the context of raising children to become skilled and educated workers capable of outcompeting their foreign counterparts. Although he did not explicitly mention the H1B program, the post was understood to align with the pro-visa position of his future fellow Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk.

While Ramaswamy does provide a unique perspective due to his upbringing as an academically talented child of immigrant parents (the Ohio native went to Harvard after graduating as valedictorian), many of his statements are intrinsically misguided and ignore certain underlying premises of American tradition. For example, the post includes the following list of improvements Ramaswamy would like to see in the way children are raised.

Although his argument is logically sound — more studying leads to more future success, it ignores the reality that America’s secondary education system that somehow doesn’t focus on education has, over the centuries, produced one of the most robust higher education programs in the world and the greatest economy in the world. Granted, the strength of America’s colleges and economy can be attributed to a myriad of historical factors and not merely a successful secondary education philosophy, it is a testament that at the very least, our education system and culture are not as much of a failure as Ramaswamy paints it to be. Many families with high school-age children from all over the globe would do anything to have their children experience an American education, but few in America would want the reverse.

Ramaswamy furthers, “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” But that should be a source of pride — not shame — for our nation. When other countries teach their children to read textbooks, America allows its children to explore themselves and work with people. There’s nothing inherently wrong about being a “prom queen,” and the distinction is not inferior in any wayto that of a “math olympiad champ.” In the American workplace, including in engineering occupations, rank progression is accomplished not by the biggest brain, but rather the sweetest mouth. And that’s not to say American companies are corrupt and prize networking over intellectual competence either. Since the advent of the internet and now with the development of AI, America is in lesser need of “valedictorians” than ever before, and does not require as many engineers as it has in the past.

America’s culture of valuing interpersonal abilities over cognitive reasoning, in other words, our children’s willingness to think more about the next high school football game than the next SAT, is the foundation for not only the strongest economy in the world but also ironically, the most proficient engineering society. Ramaswamy, of all people, should realize that brains without likeability can’t go far in America.