Recently, in the conservative movement, there has been an immigration debate. This is not with regard to illegal immigration, as all conservatives know that combating illegal immigration is a necessary step for national security and public safety. No, instead, this debate is over legal immigration.
One may have seen the posts of Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy on both the necessity of importing foreign workers and taking the fun-loving, thrill-seeking nature of Americans out of them to be replaced with:
“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.’”
I encourage everyone to read the full tweet by Ramaswamy and his other tweets on the state of American culture. He appears to believe that the problem with culture wars is their interference with the work of Americans.
While it is true that productivity is necessarily harmed by promoting non-productivity-related agendas of race, sex, color and culture, it is equally true that our culture wars are being waged for just that: culture.
The kick-off for the controversy began on X over Musk and Ramaswamy’s promotion of H1-B visas to employ foreign tech workers at below-market value. This practice is buoyed by the South Asian migrant community, which is willing to accept low-paying jobs in America, as they still pay far more than a job in Delhi or Islamabad.
This practice is not unknown, and in many cases, South Asians have used the immigration programs of the United States to migrate their family through job programs. There are multiple lawsuits and studies published by the Center for Immigration Studies on the racial nepotism of South Asians, the malpractices of employers needing a veneer of legality to underpay foreign workers and the corrupt hiring practices that lead to diminishing returns on high-skill labor.
Sam Hyde, comedian and commentator, brought the most attention to the debate from the America First perspective. Hyde made two 45-minute videos entitled “Dear Elon” and “Dear Vivek,” respectively. Both of these are worth watching, even for those who disagree with his views.
Some will say that strict immigration to the United States is DEI for white people. To this, I say that Americans should not compete with the world for a job in their own country.
We all know what an American is- Americans are the collection of people who created this country from its founding to the closing of the frontier. We as Americans are, in effect, several tribes of Anglo-Scots of the mid-Atlantic, East-Anglian-New Englanders, the German Lutherans of the Midwest, the Spanish and Natives of the Southwest, descendants of American slaves and buffalo soldiers and Chinese and Irish rail workers.
America was a country with untamed land; that land was conquered, and those living here beforehand are Americans by default. Those who have arrived in America since the close of the frontier have not moved for freedom and uncertainty but for guaranteed prosperity. For example, last year, Mexico alone received 63 billion dollars in remittances from known Mexican workers in the United States.
Let us be clear as well: there are no jobs that Americans don’t want; there are only jobs that exploit and mistreat Americans too much in their own country. Business interests in America betray Americans repeatedly. Not least of all exemplified by Ramaswamy.
It is right to mistrust big businesses whose interests are not yours. Families and higher wages are indeed bad for a corporate bottom line, and on these issues, it is the role of the government to tell big businesses to step with caution.
It is not the fault of an American man who works 40 hours a week at three jobs since few companies will hire full-time to avoid paying benefits, nor is it the fault of an American woman who must work full-time because her husband’s job does not provide for the family that we do not have enough children to fill the roles being given to immigrants. Americans shouldn’t work 80 hours a week to get ahead in our country.
It is not for want of money or resources that “Americanism” could not thrive in Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither will Americanism be brought to Ukraine, an infinitely corrupt nation nor will nations like Israel submit to the idea that an Israeli is someone born on one side of a border.
The opposite is also true: Americanness is not imbued upon a person by crossing a border, nor is anti-American hate erased by living here. Culture exists in nations. Nations are made up of people, and people are complex, multi-faceted and to be treasured at the expense of all else.
Nations are messy, and their inability to be well-defined and categorized leaves them open to Marxist critique as non-material and, thus, ultimately non-existent. Yet they endure, America is not as young as it once was and “American” can no longer mean everyone everywhere if only they wish it.
Santiago McMunn is a senior history major.