Ramaswamy reveals something many MAGAites don’t want to acknowledge
By Stephen Macaulay
First, let’s agree that no one wants illegal immigrants in the country. To be sure there may be all kinds of mitigating circumstances as to why they have broken the law to come to the U.S., but if we are a country of laws, not men, then upholding the laws is essential.
But there are illegal immigrants and there are immigrants.
In the last category there are people like, well, Elon Musk, who was born in Pretoria, South Africa, then moved to Canada before moving to the United States.
And let’s not forget that Melania Trump was born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia.
However, there are those in the Republican Party who paint all immigrants with a brush ladened with tar and are ready to run them on a rail out of town and out of the country.
This has become visible through the contretemps set off by Vivek Ramaswamy, who posted a message on somewhat social media about the need for an increase in the number of H-1B visas in order to have highly intelligent, high-skilled workers in the US.
Ramaswamy — who, incidentally, was born in Cincinnati, which is something that many of his sudden critics probably can’t imagine — went on to point out that too many Americans are not sufficiently interested in doing, well, the hard stuff.
He wrote that a society that “celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers”.
And engineers are important.
He also wrote there needs to be “more 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”.
(Presumably Ramaswamy spends too little time in the real world if he thinks that “hanging out at the mall” is still, as the kids say, “a thing.”)
These observations, caused considerable consternation among the anti-immigrant portion of the Republican Party, a portion that seems Super-Sized.
Elon Musk, who probably doesn’t hire a whole lot of people for SpaceX or even Tesla who were regular attendees at Trump MAGA rallies, waded into the controversy by calling critics of Ramaswamy’s remarks “contemptible fools” and “hateful, unrepentant racists” who “will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.”
But really, who can blame these people, as they, too, probably, in Ramaswamy’s words, spent too much time watching “reruns of Friends” rather than a movie about relentless work and achievement like Whiplash?
One reason why there is this divide in perception between Ramaswamy, who has degrees from both Harvard and Yale Law, and those who eked out of high school is because the latter are often chanting, in effect, “We’re number one!” when it comes to anything from education to health care.
For example, according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), when it comes to “tertiary education,” or simply graduating college, the U.S. isn’t number one, but number nine.
Perhaps Trump is interested in making Canada the 51st state because it is number one.
The US follows not only Canada in the number of those who have finished tertiary education, but also Japan, Ireland, South Korea, United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, and Luxembourg.
And as health care is going to become another area of consternation, it is worth noting that the US doesn’t rank so high there, either.
According a 2024 study by The Commonwealth Fund, which describes itself as “a nonprofit private foundation supporting independent research on health policy reform and a high-performance health system,” when it comes to health care system performance measured among 10 countries, the US, despite spending considerably more than the others, ranks 10th, behind Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany.
Far from number one.
Yet populist chants and slogans don’t allow there to be discernment of what’s really going on.
All Americans can be proud of the accomplishments of Silicon Valley, which is certainly a number one.
Tesla, which is a global leading player in electric vehicles (the leading player until China’s BYD ascended), was established in California, as was SpaceX, another remarkable global player.
According to new data from the US Census Bureau, there are more foreign-born people living in California — 26.7% of its total population — than any other state.
Coincidence?