Counter-Currents
On Tariffs, Visas, & the Indian Programming Scam
Spencer J. Quinn
1,804 words
One of the things I like about Donald Trump’s promise to impose tariffs is how it places the needs of American producers over the needs of American consumers. With strong tariffs in place, consumers might be forced to pay more for superior goods than they normally would, or simply pay more for goods in general. This naturally happens when government artificially influences the market. Without fair competition from foreign goods, domestic producers face less pressure to reduce their prices. By increasing the prices of foreign goods, government is in effect reducing its supply for the majority of consumers, who would not realistically be expected to pay such higher prices. And with reduced supply comes higher costs.
Trump and many in the MAGA movement today believe that this is an acceptable price to pay for maintaining domestic industry. And I agree. Protecting American manufacturing through tariffs helps keep unemployment low and many Americans off welfare and other forms of assistance. Of course, the way Trump uses the threat of tariffs as a means to stop foreign nations from exploiting the United States is an additional benefit. As a result, many Americans love Donald Trump—he makes an effort to put America first.
This is why I consider Trump’s recent endorsement of the H-1B Visa program to be out of character with his pro-tariff MAGA agenda. Essentially, the program intends to import hundreds of thousands of supposedly high-skilled tech workers from the third world, especially India, in order to increase America’s GDP and better enable us to compete economically and technologically with China. At the same time, however, flooding America with so many tech workers will increase competition for tech jobs among domestic tech people. In other words, Trump hopes to protect American industry from foreign competition through tariffs while not protecting American tech workers from foreign competition through H-1B visas.
This inconsistency reveals a lack of vision on the part of the incoming Trump administration. Why would American tech producers be less worthy of protection than, say, American steel or auto workers? Both are producers, and both are Americans. Sure, American tech consumers might eventually enjoy lower prices with relaxed H-1B Visa immigration (or they might not). In either case, would that be worth laying off tens of thousands of American tech workers or cutting them off from employment altogether? Donald Trump needs to understand this will be the unintended consequence of the H-1B Visa program, and it will have nothing to do with merit or honest competition. Instead, it has everything to with three things apart from merit or honest competition:
First, employers are looking for cheap labor, and not all cheap labor involves picking grapes or paving roads. H-1B visas will allow employers to pay foreign workers a pittance while exploiting them for their services. This could entail forcing them to work up to 80-hour weeks. With the promise of living in America in the balance, many will gladly do just that. American tech workers should be protected from such a scheme because the corruption it entails will simply be too tempting for most tech employers to resist.
Here is a basic rundown of how it works:
So why pay a perfectly qualified American computer programmer $120,000 per year when you can pay a Indian coder $80,000 or $60,000 to do the same job? This is exactly the kind of imbalance that tariffs effectively combat. Why not mandate tech tariffs on foreign workers which ensure they earn well above the going rate, thus effectively pricing them out of the market and encouraging employers to stick with domestic talent? If these foreign workers are so highly skilled then they should be earning far more than their American counterparts, no? Elon Musk himself has proposed such a solution.
Secondly, these foreign workers are not as highly skilled as they are billed to be. As a person who has worked in the tech industry for over twenty-five years, I can attest that computer programmers from India run a widespread scam wherein they fake their resumés, cover for each other in phone interviews and references, and show up on site with no credentials whatsoever, hoping to learn on the job. Perhaps one in ten of them may understand the work and will go from desk to desk attempting to train the others. In my case, I once worked with an Indian woman who worked remotely and curiously accomplished little during the day but would turn in work in the evenings. When I pressed her to do a fairly simple task during work hours, she left early, claiming to be sick, and then resigned. The scuttlebutt among her Indian colleagues was that her husband had been doing the work for her.
Yes, this is anecdotal, but I have compared notes with many white programmers, statisticians, and engineers over the years, and they say essentially the same thing. In fact, a white programmer I knew was complaining about this sort of scam in the late 1990s before I got started in the tech industry. It was so outlandish, I could not believe it until I saw it firsthand. Simply put, large numbers of people from the Indian subcontinent are desperate to come to American and are perfectly willing to commit all sorts of fraud to do so. Further, only they do it, it seems. I have not seen fraudulent behavior on such a large scale from any other race or ethnic group.
Even worse, in most cases they truly lack the skill they claim to have. With a few resplendent exceptions, the Indian programmers I have encountered are tolerable at best, and on average are subpar. Their coding tends to be spaghetti collations of undocumented scribblings. Such programs will work in the short term, but will not be easily comprehended or updated when needs change later on; and you can forget about their being portable across projects. Many times I have had to follow Indian programmers on a program and spend hours cleaning up their messes. They don’t indent. They simply comment out code they no longer need. They overlook redundancies. They don’t name variables descriptively. Worst of all, they have no sense of elegance. They take no joy in their work. They don’t organize their programs so much as rig them to fulfill some immediate need, and they don’t care if this makes the program more difficult to reuse later. Instead, their programs simply get longer and longer as they tack on brute-force solution after brute-force solution rather than devise more dynamic methods to solve problems and use the computer language in the manner it was designed to be used: to reduce work rather than to increase it. I have had the misfortune many times of inheriting 3,000 lines of code that needed less than 800 to do a particular task.
Of course, all NAXALT caveats apply. I have also dealt satisfactorily with Indians in non-technical roles, such as management (and in this relationship, it must be said, I have had a few dear colleagues). Yes, many Indian programmers do work hard and for long hours, but often because they are not very good. What takes them twelve hours to do adequately would take me and others like me only four to do well. And before I get accused of racism, I can assure everyone that this is business, and I put all racial affinity aside when doing business. If I have a job to oversee I don’t care who does the work as long as they do it well, on time, and under budget. In my professional life, I have not encountered Chinese programmers with the kinds of deficits I find in Indian ones. The vast majority of East Asian coders I have dealt with—both in Asia and in America—are fine. They’re smart, serious, and give me no reason whatsoever to complain. Black programmers give me much more complain about, of course, but since there so few black programmers, this is not a terribly big issue. But it is a big issue with Indian programmers, mostly because there are so many of them.
This is a big problem in the tech industry, and it will only be exacerbated by expanding the H-1B Visa program.
Lastly, I am afraid that Trump and Elon Musk are making the same mistake that whites have been making since the Second World War: assuming that non-whites look past race the way white people do. Taking Trump and Musk at their word means assuming that they are looking past race so to take civic nationalism seriously. Anyone can be an American as long as they work hard and contribute. America is an ideal, a mindset, a way of life—not a nation of people who share a similar ethnic heritage. So why not actively import qualified non-whites, boost American GDP, and stick it to the Chinese?
The why not can be easily seen once we view the expansion of the H-1B Visa program as a racial power play devised by Indian-Americans like Vivek Ramaswamy. They simply want more Indians in America in order to increase their demographic power. This is natural ethnocentrism at work and will ultimately result in Indian tech mafias having far more influence in America than they deserve.
This is not about East Asians dominating math departments at universities, where performance can be judged objectively and there is not a terrible amount of money flowing. Instead, the expansion of the H-1B Visa program will make it easier for less qualified people to gain power at tech companies. And if history is any indication, once they get this power, they will do everything in their power not to share it with outsiders. They will keep it within the tribe, so to speak, which is exactly how Indians practice politics back home in India. For example, according to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, India currently has the highest rates of bribery in Asia. It is also estimated that a staggering 46 percent of citizens use personal connections within government to take advantage of services due to the slow and inefficient Indian bureaucracy. Transporting such a culture into America will ultimately mean freezing out domestic tech people from employment and influential positions, many of whom are white, and all of whom should be protected by the incoming Trump administration, just like American industries will be protected by tariffs.
Hopefully Donald Trump will realize what is “bubbling under the surface of this country” as well, and restrict rather than expand the H-1B Visa program when he begins his second administration. Perhaps he can order a DEI tariff on universities in order to make it more profitable for them to exchange woke curricula for STEM curricula and develop enough homegrown talent so as to not need H-1B visas to begin with. That would truly be putting America first.
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16 comments
Great article. It dawned on me the other day that the, “women in tech”, may be another ethno-centric scam. Most of the women in programming are Indian. Some are decent coders, many are garbage. Get the wifey a job too! Just a suspicion.
If you look at Carnegie Mellon it is very interesting. Their STEM is no run by Indians, and they have a massive DIE program in place. The level of coddling to blacks they outline is insane. Who will lose? Whitey of course.
This is why it is essential that Indians not be put in charge of reform. Nor should they be put in charge of our institutions. Civil Rights is anti-White. Harmeet Dhillon, of the one true (Hindu), God, should not be in charge of reforming it. A White man must be. The FBI is anti-White and persecuting Christians. Kashimandavendrugu Patel should not be in charge of its reform. A White Christian man should be – a young White Christian from the Old Glory Club should be in charge in particular since he is bent on proper reform. Krishna has no AI expertise. A White man who is a luminary in AI should be in charge of any AI advisory role should we even need it.
The RNC symbolically formalized the ethnic and religious conquest of America and Christianity by the Indian subcontinent with Harmeet Dhillon. This is an outrage and it should not stand.
Similarly, Vivek Ramadingalong should be investigated for securities fraud and deported. Similarly, we must harp on the many Indian tech CEOs and their behavior. Pichai at Google with two episodes of total White erasure – cultural genocide and a culture that is rabidly anti-White. The IBM guy who gave bonuses to not hire and not promote White men. The many cases of Indian CEO fraud. The Indian incentive to support DIE is not discussed and it must be put front and center.
Finally, you touch on a point that we need to get better at harping on. None of these people have any tie to the traditions, heritage and legacy of America. We are a 500+ year old country tied to an Indo-European civilization that goes back into the mists of time. Already, the ethnic warfare of the past 80 years has likely destroyed the fabric of our country. Vivek clearly thinks his culture superior to ours. What is the future when you add yet another ethnos to the mix and one that believes its culture superior to ours and who has no ties to our history?
Will our heritage, traditions and heros be state sponsored? Already the answer seems no. Why are we adding another alien culture that will only attempt to crowd out our heritage and our traditions. This is the very definition of cultural genocide and conquest.
Balaji Srinivasan has declared Asia historically superior to The West and claims that the world is mean reverting to Asia. This guy and Vivek should be run out of the country. They have declared themselves conquerors and enemies, albeit using very clever use of the language.
We are on the precipice. We have been given a gift. We must go keep asking the key questions including the ones related to American culture and American heritage and how we are to repair the fabric of society already in tatters from previous ethnic conflict in the past 80 years. Adding Indians and Muslims will only make it worse. Not only do we have a right to our land, we have a right to erect and celebrate Our culture and our history and heritage upon it without contention from competing tribes.
Well India’s great contribution to high technology is this:
“elderly white sir I am callings from official Microsoft supports sir, we discovered your computer is having a virus, please now give kindly your credit card details and access to your bank account to get rid of virus that is coming out of your computer”
I think things are getting way too tech and software bound anyway. What are all these millions of jobs Musk wants to fill actually for ? What will stop working if they are not filled? AI is eventually going to fill a lot anyway. If it’s really let off the chain, it will wipe out a lot of jobs, and it will be able to write its own super efficient code just as it pleases.
I really just don’t know where things are headed. Very uncertain.
Trump isn’t going to stop these Indians coming, he first put the idea out there months ago on the All-In podcast. The only chance you had at stopping this was BEFORE the election, now you have no leverage.
Even protesting on X is limited as Musk can just ban you, which he’s already done to many accounts as well demonitising.
And we would have had even less leverage if Kamalamala had won the election.
🙂
How does one make money out of Twitter ? They run ads and the biggest accounts get a percentage?
I’m sure some people think this kind of thing is amazing, a God-given opportunity from above, and maybe I’m just a crusty old fool, but it sounds like a recipe for distortion via incentives. It sounds like a horrible mess.
Agree, and how does Facebook even begin to make money? Have you ever bought something you saw advertised on Facebook? It’s seems to push dungeons and dragons dice on me all the time. I think what’s going on is the hedge funds are floating its stock, mainly via quantitative easing from “keystrokes” in the government. They’re sort of choosing which companies they want to succeed.
Fb make money because advertisers pay to appear in the feed. Anyone can set up a fb ad to boost (as they call it) a post (becoming an advertiser) from their page and such. It’s the other way round that confuses me; accounts making money just for being e celebs with a certain following. I’ve heard Instagram does this too. But if you’re paid by the platform, there’s going to be even more pressure to conform. Who is making money this way today while saying anything spicy ?
Oh, I didn’t understand advertising. Is that how tv works?
-MAGA elected Trump, not Musk. Trump must do what is right & have MAGA’s back, if not , then Trump is a traitor. It’s that simple.
-“The US military evidently “aggressively seeks out immigrants.” “
Cowards and traitors are infinitely more despicable and a threat to our people’s existence than any foe can ever be.
Trump’s H1B choices should have been easy, back Musk or back MAGA, in other words be a traitor or be a patriot.
Trump New Year’s Eve address said:
“We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country.”
He chose the former & will now be referred to as Trump The Traitor (TTT).
It was the maga (no caps as they haven’t earned it) people who elected Trump. He has picked many for his upcoming administration, has he surrounded himself with maga people? NO. Trump New Year’s Eve address was:
“We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country.”
He clearly chose being a traitor instead of being a patriot & back maga. He stabbed maga in the back.
No one knows how many illegals we have but it must be north of 35,000,000. If that’s not enough with the crime & lowering of wages it entails, now Trump will bring in even more cheap labor. If maga had power, Trump would be terrified to even think of crossing maga. Real power is maga being an unshakable solid voting block & chanting throughout the entirety of his inauguration the word ‘traitor’. Shaming Trump relentlessly for the rest of his life for betraying, for stabbing the maga people in the back. It also sends a clear message that maga is here to stay in perpetuity & will only get stronger & powerful. In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest circle in Hell is reserved for traitors.
XIV VERBA
Great piece. A few comments:
“It is also estimated that a staggering 46 percent of citizens use personal connections within government to take advantage of services due to the slow and inefficient Indian bureaucracy.”
Brown people are already slowing down government in the US such that arm twisting of representatives or government supervisors is necessary to get unemployment, inheritance, etc.
As far as Trump fixing things, there is probably no hope. He basically sold positions in his administration to donors, some of whom are in tech.
It might be good to write an article concerning which tech specializations are most safe from the H-1B swarm.
It appears even Italian politicians don’t get it or are controlled opposition:
“If you don’t like it in Italy, if you don’t like the Italians, if you feel uncomfortable, go back to where you came from. We don’t need you,” Salvini declared, channeling the frustration of many Italians who feel that their hospitality is being exploited by dangerous individuals who show disdain for the nation’s traditions and laws.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Salvini needs to stop with the show & remigrate all of them & indict those responsible for this invasion with treason.
I think the basic problem is that the rich whites and upper middle class whites actually want poorer white people to disappear and people of color to stay as their servants and cheap labor. That was my impression anyway as a visitor from a post-communist country whenever I came to England, France, USA, Germany or Switzerland. Racial difference is even very advantageous for rich whites, because it only potentiates that class gap between employer and worker or servant.
Yes, I think what will happen in the long run is that under a still predominantly white (or rather Jewish?) ruling class there will be an upper middle class made up of mainly slant-eyed East Asiatics with some rich Indians and Arabs.
The lower middle class will be mainly Indians and Hispanics. There will be some remnants of white working class people and a remnant of an impoverished white middle class (maybe 15% of the population around 2200?). Below that will be the mass of the colored proletariat (underclass Hispanics, Pakis, blacks, and various low IQ brown people).
They never cared about immigration when it was only affecting working class whites. (Their contempt for working class whites was infamously immortalized in the South Park “dey took our jerbs” skit that middle class white liberals loved to use as a form of mockery.)
Whites who are well-to-do can afford to be liberal. They’ve always assumed that their moral stances would never impact them directly. In fact, being anti-white is a modern form of conspicuous consumption. It’s an ostentatious display to convey that you are so well-off that you can afford to openly advocate against your own group and not be affected by it.
Of course it’s incredibly short-sighted and now their disastrous and narcissistic politics are starting to catch up to them.
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