Program for skilled foreign workers pits Trump and Musk against Bannon – and progressive Bernie Sanders
Steve Bannon, one of the architects of Trumpism, is one the most influential voices on the right. Bernie Sanders, the veteran US senator from Vermont, is among the leading figures on the progressive left. In these divided times, they have found common ground.
As Donald Trump returns to the White House, a bitter row over H-1B visas – designed to bring skilled foreign workers to the US – has exposed the delicate threads that tie together his broad coalition – and that of the Democrats.
Trump’s appointment of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, as an adviser on artificial intelligence sparked a backlash from within his base – fueled in part by anti-Indian racism and criticism of Krishnan’s views on immigration. This was the stage for an acrimonious spat over the merits and pitfalls of the H-1B scheme.
You must log in or register to comment.
Something like the abuse of indentured servants to destroy the economic well-being of the American worker, aka the H-1B program, always had an uneasy truce on the right wing of American politics.
On the one hand, the main promise of Republicans they sell their deplorables is about keeping this country white and Christian and being “America first”. They’ll also be “hurting the right people”, too. Because they need someone to vote for extremely wealthy broligarchs. You won’t be able to get enough to come out and vote for criminally low capital gains taxes on the broligarchs.
On the other hand, the broligarchs hate having any class of workers thinking they have any autonomy when it comes to labor negotiations. People that might be highly skilled represent a real threat to the class hierarchy and so they ensured that they’ll always have a threat to hang over the American workers, AND they’ll make a shit-ton even more money in the process. As an added bonus, they get to treat foreign workers (who also are often not white and not xtian) as second-class…well, I was going to say citizens, but they are not even given citizenship.
The H-1B program is really a microcosm of the conflict within the right. On the one hand, they have to pander to whiteness and xtianity and all that to get just enough voters to put them in office. On the other hand, if they can make more of that filthy lucre, and hide/ignore anything that looks like they are screwing over any of their base, well, the choice is obvious.
