The H1-B Controversy

 

A controversy has blown up on the right over the H1-B visa program. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to expand it, to recruit the best talent from overseas, particularly in the tech sector. Other MAGAnauts object that this suppresses wages and takes jobs away from Americans.

I am with Musk and Ramaswamy, if the tech sector is targeted narrowly. The US and Canada need immigrants. We need them because women are not having enough babies. The only question is how to select them. This is about the best way to select them. Being really good at IT, and to a lesser extent engineering, is a good test of raw IQ. This is why, in their hiring, the big tech firms don’t look at formal qualifications, but give prospective employees what is in effect an IQ test.

Aside from needing immigrants generally, the US and Canada need to maintain and expand their advantages in the high tech sector. Both their prosperity and their security depend on being ahead in this race. It makes good sense to use their attractiveness to immigrants to recruit the best talent.

Immigrants with high IQ are most desirable for many other reasons. Besides inventing things, they are likely to contribute greatly to the culture: to the arts. They will make more money than average and generate more revenue to fund government programs. They will start businesses and employ people. People with high IQ are far less likely to commit crimes and especially violent crimes. And hey, they will marry and improve the gene pool.

Those opposed to the idea in the US point to Canada, and say that Canada has tried a similar program, with our point system for prospective immigrants, and it has done nothing for the local high tech sector.

Canada’s system is indeed a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, it does not select for IQ, but for formal academic credentials. When this is applied to the Third World, where most are too poor to get to college or university, let alone a college of university in Canada, and qualifications can essentially be bought, it does not select for high IQ, but for membership in the current ruling class of that country. 

The reason countries in the Third World are poor is that they have a corrupt and selfish ruling class.

Such a system imports this corrupt and selfish culture directly into the Canadian upper classes, thereby importing all the problems of the Third World.

We need to consult the tech industry, and use the tests they have developed for job applicants, to pick immigrants.