Trump settles MAGA movement feud on tech visas

A week before Donald Trump fired him in August 2017, then-presidential strategist Steve Bannon blew up at this writer for suggesting that American industry needed to bring in Chinese engineers.

“They’re all Chinese spies!” Bannon shouted. We were sitting in Bannon’s disheveled cubicle in the West Wing, talking about reviving US manufacturing. America graduates barely 34,000 mechanical engineers and about 17,000 chemical engineers a year, I observed. As much as we want to train American talent, I argued, we can’t do that fast enough to keep pace with China.

Math education in the US is a disaster, and the Bannon wing of the MAGA movement is a case in point: Opponents of legal immigration for skilled workers can’t understand the numbers that show how badly they are needed. More on that below.

Bannon waded into the debate again last week, lambasting Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for backing the H-1B visa program that allows US companies to hire foreign engineers. The H-1B program “t’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages…the thing’s a SCAM by the Oligarchs in Silicon Valley,” Bannon tweeted.

Musk responded on X, “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” the program that brought Musk to America from his native South Africa.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk wrote on X, echoing similar remarks by another Trump advisor from the tech industry, Vivek Ramaswamy. Huffed Bannon against Musk, “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’— need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.”

On Saturday, Trump slapped down Bannon and his followers, telling the New York Post, “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them. I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

The United States awards about 230,000 bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science each year, compared with about 1.2 million in China. The biggest problem at US engineering schools—excluding a few top-rated schools—is finding students qualified to major in the subject at the undergraduate level.

In 2009, 34% of US eighth graders tested at “proficient” (26%) or “advanced” (8%) on the National Assessment of Education Progress test. By 2020, that had fallen to just 24%, with 20% at “proficient” and 4% at “advanced,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

A key indicator of student demand for engineering programs at highly rated state universities is the engineering school acceptance rate.  For many of the best state universities, the acceptance rate is 50% or higher, indicating an absence of demand for the major. Only 6% of American undergraduates major in engineering, compared with 33% in China and Russia.

Our universities hire diversity managers rather than engineering professors. Except for the Ivy League and a few top-tier schools, universities can’t find enough qualified high school graduates to fill their engineering programs.

Iowa State, ranked number 46 in the U.S. News rating of engineering schools, accepts 91% of applicants. The University of Missouri, in 99^th place, accepts 85%. And Texas A&M, ranked number 10, takes 64%.

The problem starts in grade school. There are slightly less than 250,000 high school math teachers in the US, but US universities in 2021 graduated just 27,000 Bachelor’s degrees in math each year—and few of them chose to teach.

In Europe, a bachelor’s degree in mathematics is required to teach the subject at the secondary school level. American schools make do with a few courses in “math education.”

To persuade more mathematicians to teach mathematics, high schools would have to pay math teachers more than, say, gym teachers. Presently they earn almost identical salaries. The teachers’ unions, founded on the principle that all forms of teaching are equal, would object strenuously.

It gets worse: In many parts of the country, math instruction is deliberately dumbed down in the name of “equality.” San Francisco eliminated accelerated math instruction in middle and high schools in 2014. The school boards of Troy, Missouri, Tulsa Oklahoma, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and many others followed suit.

In 2023 the California State Board of Education proposed to delay algebra instruction until ninth grade. That schedule, the board claimed, “affirms California’s commitment to ensuring equity and excellence in math learning for all students.”

Educating enough American engineers to reduce dependence on immigrants will take years under the most optimistic assumptions. The present H-1B program does depress pay for qualified Americans, as its critics aver. That is simple to fix. Many countries, for example, Australia, require employers who sponsor a skilled immigrant to pay the going rate for the same job.

The Australian model is designed to “ensure that overseas workers are not paid less than an Australian worker doing the same work. They will also stop these visa programs being used to undercut the Australian labor market.” The onus is on employers to prove they are not paying a sponsored immigrant less than the going salary.

The H-1B program could stand improvement, but the United States can’t do without imported talent – not for years to come.

Follow David P Goldman on X at @davidpgoldman