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Editor’s note: This opinion piece is partially adapted from Rachel Campos-Duffy’s monologue on “Jesse Watters Primetime” on December 30, 2024.
Following President-elect Trump’s victory, the MAGA movement has been wrestling with this question: What is ‘America First’? Are they people or profits? Many insist that the United States is defined by its economic and military power. However, America is more than GDP growth, the stock market or even the “thought” of self-government. It is a physical place, with people who share common history, traditions and culture.
Central to the “America First” question is the online debate over the expansion of the H-1B visa program, which allows American employers to hire foreign workers, and which is vehemently defended by tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy and Musk are competitive men and their desire for the United States to win in the global game against our adversaries seems sincere. But the question is, what is your definition of winning? And at whose expense should the game be played?
MUSK AND RAMASWAMY IGNITION THE MAGA WAR OVER SKILLED IMMIGRATION AND AMERICAN ‘MEDIOCRITY’
The H-1B policy was created to bring “the best and the brightest” to the United States and address labor shortages in specialized fields. On paper, it sounds noble. In practice, however, it has been grossly abused and undermines American workers in tech jobs that no one can credibly argue Americans don’t want to do.
And in 2021 US Census Bureau Study found that up to 72% of STEM graduates in the United States do not even work in STEM-related fields. So is this really about labor shortages or corporate profits at the expense of citizens who cannot compete with cheap foreign labor?
who can forget what happened at disney in 2014, when IT workers were laid off and forced to retrain their foreign-born replacements if they wanted to receive their severance check? Americans are not opposed to bringing in more geniuses like Musk. But let’s not pretend that Disney’s foreign replacements were all budding Einsteins. These workers have restrictive conditions, are paid less, work longer hours, and cannot leave their jobs without risking deportation. They also come with the hope of becoming citizens and bringing their families through chain migration. It is a rigged game, designed to create cheap labor and make it impossible for American citizens to compete.
DAVID MARCUS: MAGA’S H-1B ‘CIVIL WAR’ IS EXACTLY HOW POLITICS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK
Ramaswamy argues that the problem is not mass immigration, but American culture itself. We need these foreign workers, he says, because our culture has “revered mediocrity” for decades. We celebrate the prom queen over the math champion. The athlete over the best student.
It’s a convenient theory, but it misses the mark entirely.
American culture is not the problem; It is its destruction that is at the heart of the problem. American culture gave the world electricity, airplanes, automobiles, Elvis, the Web, Rocky Balboa and “Star Wars.” What we are witnessing now is not the failure of American culture but its deliberate erosion: a campaign of demoralization fueled by decades of mass immigration and an education system poisoned by cultural Marxism: a foreign and downright un-American ideology.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are competitive men and their desire for the United States to win in the international game against our adversaries seems sincere. But the question is, what is your definition of winning? And at whose expense should the game be played? (Getty Images)
Despising prom queens and promoting “America is last” visa policies will not restore our greatness. It is a distraction from the real problem: the dismantling of our national identity, the takeover of our schools by communist activists, and the devaluation of the American workforce.
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The Constitution tells us that the primary duty of our government is to “promote the common welfare” and “secure the benefits of liberty” to the American people. There was a time when the United States kept that promise. During his travels in the United States in the early 19th century, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America is great because it is good.
Unfortunately, we are replacing kindness with ungodliness. Some of MAGA’s newest members are Silicon Valley atheists who imagine a cold technological and corporate future for us, one that fails to appreciate the humanity and vulnerability of our own citizens.
Secularism, transhumanism and artificial intelligence will never satisfy the soul. America needs God, family, love, and a return to real relationships, not virtual ones. And that includes the relationship between citizens and their government: a government that truly cares about them and puts them first.
The answer to our problems is not to import millions of people from all over the world. The answer is to rediscover who we are. Ben Franklin, the Wright Brothers, Sunday church, family dinners, rodeos, skyscrapers, rock and roll, Friday night lights and homecoming queens. The answer is to fix what has been deliberately broken in our culture and institutions.
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America is not a sports team and winning in the stock market is not the definition of success for America. “America First” is not a slogan; It is a guiding principle.
MAGA is about honoring our Christian history and values. It’s about prioritizing our people, our families, and our American way of life.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is the host of “Bongino Report Early Edition with Evita.”
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