Doug Casey Exposes the Real Issues Behind the H-1B Controversy

International Man: Vivek Ramaswamy recently faced backlash for supporting the H-1B visa program and criticizing American culture.

Many saw his comments as endorsing replacement immigration for highly paid tech jobs (link).

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: Unfortunately, he’s mostly right about US workers. Their work ethic has been corrupted by cradle-to-grave benefits, class resentment, and a general degradation of Western values—something we’ve often discussed.

But importing Indians won’t improve the culture, it’ll further destroy what’s left of American culture. Maintaining the culture, not a few low-level jobs is the main problem that we’re facing. The culture is what makes America America. It’s a belief in Western virtues and the cultivation of a high-trust society.

America is held together by common values and beliefs. Those things are not enforced by police but by peer pressure, moral opprobrium, and social approbation. Importing massive numbers of people from a radically different culture with radically different beliefs and habits will change the best things about America and could tear the social fabric.

I’ve been to over 150 countries, lived in ten, and read a lot of history. My view is that Western Civilization stands like a Colossus above any and all other civilizations. Here’s the link to where I list them.

It’s not just a question of some people losing their jobs. To start with, “jobs” don’t belong to anybody. No one has a right to any job, certainly not by virtue of where he was born. That’s apart from the probability that humanoid robots equipped with AI will eliminate most “jobs” over the next decade.

In the meantime, mass migration is a serious matter. Canada, for instance, is a country of 40 million people. But it’s importing about a million and a half immigrants per year. Most of them are from the subcontinent, and it’s completely changing the nature of the country. I’ve often joked that if you like real diversity, then Canada should import 50 million Third Worlders—most of whom are antagonistic to each other as well as the natives. This is what’s going on today. Here’s a link to a recent interview I did with Jayant Bhandari on this topic. I urge everyone now reading this to watch it.

International Man: What would ideal hiring policies look like in a free society?

How would they compare to today’s reality?

Doug Casey: They’d be radically different. Employers and prospective employees could drop their respective masks of political correctness and deal with each other honestly. The best person for a job is the one with appropriate skills and abilities. It’s truly stupid to hire a second-rater because of his race, origins, or sexual preferences.

The question boils down to: How to solve the migrant problem, whether they’re legal with H-1B visas or illegal, who just streamed across the border?

The answer is to eliminate welfare. And by that, I mean 100% of all welfare, in any form, for absolutely everybody—no benefits of any type from the government. There were absolutely zero benefits for immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

They arrived penniless and had to make their own way. That’s in complete contrast to today’s arrivals, who can get free food, lodging, medical care, cell phones, and cash. Instead of drawing in the best kind of people, opportunity seekers who came with nothing and wanted to make their own way. We’re now drawing in people who expect to get all kinds of goodies if they can just cross the border. That’s one problem.

It’s compounded by the fact that today’s immigrants don’t share the culture and values of Western civilization. They’re of alien race, religion, language, culture, value, beliefs and habits.

Migrants don’t present a problem in small quantities; they’re typically a net plus. As an individual, I choose my friends and associates strictly based on their merit and moral character. But as a resident of Denver or Vancouver, I don’t want to be involuntarily transplanted to Karachi, Lagos, or Tegucigalpa.

There is, however, about zero chance that the suggestions I just made will be implemented. The trend now in motion will likely continue until a genuine crisis is reached.

International Man: What role does the government play in creating unfavorable labor regulations that make hiring Americans less appealing?

Doug Casey: As I’ve often said, since government is organized coercion, its proper role is exclusively to protect citizens from coercion—from abroad with a military and domestically with police.

Things like the Department of Labor, the Department of Commerce, and hundreds of others should be abolished. The vast majority of the roughly 450 governmental departments, bureaus, agencies, and what-have-you are devoted to interfering with how citizens produce and consume. They’re not just unnecessary, they’re destructive.

The same is true of groups that exist under the umbrella of the State, like labor unions. It’s fine for workers to join together voluntarily because of their occupation. People are social and get together with a myriad of mutual interests. Stamp collectors form clubs. The religious have churches. There is nothing wrong with unions. The problem is that they’ve been granted a special status by the government and can legally enforce all kinds of membership prerogatives and costs on society.

Anywhere the State intrudes, it always causes distortions in the way people act. For instance, it’s largely responsible for the foolish meme inducing everyone to get a college degree.

As a result, many millions of young people believe that if they endure four years of irrelevancies and indoctrination, at great expense in time and money, they’re home free. An unfair characterization? No. In fact, government-sponsored student loans have turned the last couple of generations into indentured servants. Most college programs now have a net negative effect.

International Man: As inflation reduces the purchasing power of American wages, it’s no surprise that workers are demanding more. However, this makes them less competitive with cheaper foreign labor.

How does currency debasement factor into the H-1B issue?

Doug Casey: The poor can typically only save with the national currency. A weak currency puts them on a treadmill that makes it hard to accumulate assets which can beat the effects of inflation.

Nor can the poor afford the legal, accounting, and investment advice which might help counter inflation and reduce their tax burden.

Wealth gravitates to the government, which dispenses it mainly to themselves and their cronies; the rich get richer. Currency debasement almost forces people to borrow money to maintain their standard of living. Debt turns workers into indentured servants with no mobility to leave a job.

Purposely importing cheap H-1B labor—whatever its other advantages—puts more pressure on the average worker.

International Man: Argentina has long embraced protectionism, promoted by politicians as a way to safeguard workers.

How did that work out?

What parallels do you see with Trump’s protectionist economic policies, and what might happen if they are implemented?

Doug Casey: In Argentina, protectionism has resulted in the inefficient manufacture of substandard goods. Argentines tried to avoid them, and they were useless for export. Companies lost ground, and workers lost skills. Everybody wound up losing.

Tariffs seemed to make it unnecessary to compete against the rest of the world. As reality asserted itself, it became necessary to subsidize the corporations, who became unprofitable and begged for government subsidies. Workers joined unions, who restricted membership to those with “connections.” The public had a hard time affording even the substandard goods that were produced.

But worst of all, tariffs were a giant step towards further politicizing society.

A politicized society is a war of all against all. It’s a dog-eat-dog society, just the opposite of an unregulated free market society, which is perversely accused of being a dog-eat-dog society.

So what parallels do I see with Trump’s protectionist economic policies?

Most people now recognize that identity politics—where people aren’t viewed as individuals but as members of a race, ethnicity, or gender—are destructive. Trump could wind up creating nationalist identity politics, where in addition to these other things, people’s main identity is as a national group, Americans.

Further, tariffs are inevitably part of what’s called “industrial policy”, where the State inserts itself ever more into the economy and relations between people. It’s a completely anti-freedom concept that inevitably makes enemies of people in foreign countries who (correctly) feel they’re being damaged. Meanwhile, tariffs lower the American standard of living.

Worse, tariffs and embargoes can easily set off wars. Roosevelt’s cutting off exports of oil and steel to the Japanese was the direct cause of their attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, a country with high tariffs is effectively placing itself under embargo.

The big problem with Trump is that he has neither economic knowledge nor a philosophical core. He doesn’t understand that putting on tariffs is destructive in every way.

On the bright side, Trump will try to undo a lot of stupid and destructive Biden and Obama regulations.

But as he takes away the regulations they put on, I’m afraid he may put on a bunch of new ones. When he removes their bad old taxes, he’s likely some new “good” taxes.

Let me end on a bright note, though. Just be thankful the US narrowly avoided electing Kamala and the Jacobins of the Democrat Party.

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