H1B Or Not to Be: The MAGA Civil War Over Immigration

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk's support of foreign workers has fueled a rift and growing war in MAGA revealing the movement's core identity of racial grievance and nativism. Bring on the popcorn.

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One of the most pathetic creatures in the MAGA universe is the person of color who truly believes that all their prostrations to Trump, shameless parroting of right-wing propaganda, indulgence in racist conspiracies, and delusional adherence to the model minority stereotypes will finally earn the love and admiration of the base which is forged from grievance, rage, and adherence to white Supremacy.

Speaking of Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire Hindu American son of Indian immigrants, he just exposed the deep, ugly faultlines that exist within the MAGA movement that just survived a brief Civil War over a bipartisan government spending deal.

We are now in the middle of an escalating conflict between immigrant MAGA vs. nativist MAGA.

The former is represented by Vivek and his fellow DOGE co-chair Elon Musk, a South African billionaire who allegedly overstayed his U.S. visa. The latter is represented by Islamophobe and plastic surgery enthusiast Laura Loomer, budget Goebbels Stephen Miller, human herpes known as Steve Bannon, and the rest of MAGA that believes immigrants of color, women, LGBTQ, Muslims, and Black people are “replacing” white Americans.

The initial shot was unintentionally fired by venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan, another Hindu son of Indian immigrants, whom Trump just named as a top artificial intelligence policy post. (The “Czar of AI and Crypto” is David Sacks, another immigrant from South Africa.) Krishnan is an advocate of the H1-B visa that is given to skilled foreign workers. Thanks to the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965, which was passed on the back of the Civil Rights Movement, the United States finally abolished racist quotas put in place that favored white immigrants over the rest of us. It gave a preference to skilled immigrants and family reunification, and as a result, many Asians and Latinos came to America and pursued the “American dream.” This included people like my parents, immigrants from Pakistan, as well as Vivek and Nikki Haley’s family, who immigrated from India.

Unlike Vivek and Nikki, my parents didn’t believe in pulling up the ladder once they reached the “top.” They didn’t chase Whiteness at the expense of sacrificing and scapegoating their South Asian culture and their communities. They understood the “model minority” myth was a ruse and extension of White supremacy. It’s simply a divide-and-conquer technique that entices people of color to become asymptotic to whiteness for the promise of protection and success. However, it was always a Faustian bargain that forced them to punch down on Black people and “bad immigrants,” who are poor, middle class, refugees, or struggling.

This diseased mindset is so exquisitely revealed in Vivek’s lengthy post on X defending H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers. He blames “our American culture [that] has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long” and a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ.”

Since Vivek’s post, Musk has chimed in several times with his support. Here’s an exquisite sample:

Let’s stay with Vivek for a bit. He went on to write that we need “more movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons.” Reading his post, I felt sad for Vivek’s childhood. You can hear the self-loathing nerd desperately crying out for popularity and acceptance. What’s worse is this privileged man with a privileged education failed to realize Whiplash was a cautionary movie in which the drummer, so obsessed with perfection, drives himself to self-destruction. The director of the movie said he imagined the character would most likely go on to kill himself despite achieving “success” at the end of the film.

It’s an apt metaphor for Vivek, Nikki Haley, Harmeet Dhillon, and any other person of color who has tried so hard - so, so hard - to be accepted by MAGA. No matter what they do, MAGA will never love them. Never ever? Never ever. Let’s remember Ann Coulter openly told Vivek she would never vote for him because “he’s an Indian.” She added that the “core national identity” of the US is a “WASP.” Trump allegedly refused to appoint Nikki Haley as his Secretary of State due to her “complexion problem” and it “doesn’t look good” for him. Republican official Harmeet Dhillon was exposed to intense hate and backlash for giving a traditional Sikh prayer at the RNC earlier in the year. “This is blasphemy. This is total blasphemy. Oh, fuck off. What a joke,” said white national Nick Fuentes, who dined with Donald Trump in 2022.

Another racist who has been incensed by the broligarchy’s recent support of foreign workers is Laura Loomer, who earned the wrath of Musk and was stripped of her verification badge. Oh, the irony. The fierce advocate of free speech used his immense power to curtail the speech of former MAGA allies who criticized his opinions on immigration.

The Face Eating Leopard enjoys eating faces, especially those with exotic, foreign flavors. I, for one, welcome this brewing MAGA Civil War. This is the monster that Vivek, Nikki, Musk, Sacks, and others deliberately created and fed to pursue their naked ambition and lust for power and wealth. They assumed their sycophancy to Trump would protect them from the monster that seeks a fictional American utopia in which white men will be on top and immigrants will be their loyal servants and Reeks.

Maybe Vivek should amend his post to include, “less tweeting, more groveling,” as a means of surviving and making it in MAGA America.

I won’t be wishing them any luck.