
Vivek Ramaswamy, former presidential candidate and co-chair of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), called for issuing more H-1B visas, which allow potential immigrants with very high and much-needed skills, to enter and work in the United States. That sparked an outcry from other Trump supporters who oppose more immigration, period.
In the back and forth on X, Ramaswamy made a provocative point, which increased the outrage. There are reasons, he says, why tech companies employ so many engineers from foreign (he might have said “Asian”) cultures. Their culture (and their parenting) puts a high premium on academic and intellectual excellence. Whereas today’s American culture puts a high premium on athletic success and mocks the smart kids as “nerds.” As a result, America’s culture currently favors mediocrity over excellence.
This is worth our consideration, touching as it does on America’s young people, the parents who enable them, the quality of our educational system, and the pop culture that reinforces all of this.
I will quote Ramaswamy’s tweet in its entirety, then follow it with a link to an article that attacks Ramaswamy’s position.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken[ed] from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
Here is a Daily Caller editorial, which argues that Ramaswamy is assuming that the role of the individual is to serve the state, which is a communist idea.
The question for our discussion: Is Vivek right?