newYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Editor's note: This editorial is adapted in part from Rachel Campos Duffy's monologue on “Jesse Watters Primetime” on December 30, 2024.
In the wake of President-elect Trump's victory, the MAGA movement has been struggling with this question: What is “America First”? Is it people or profits? Many insist that the definition of America depends on its economic and military strength. However, America more than GDP growth, stock market Or even the “idea” of autonomy. It is a physical place, home to people who share a common history, traditions and culture.
Central to the “America First” question is the online debate over expanding the H-1B visa program, which allows American employers to hire foreign workers, and which is fiercely defended by tech billionaires like Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy and Musk are competitive men, and their desire for America to win the global game against our adversaries seems sincere. But the question is, what is your definition of winning? At whose expense should the game be played?
Musk and Ramaswamy ignite a major war over skilled migration and American “middle capacity.”
The H-1B policy was created to bring the “best and brightest” to America and address labor shortages in specialized fields. On paper, it sounds noble. But in practice, it has been widely abused, disempowering American workers in tech jobs, and no one can credibly argue that Americans don't want to do it.
2021 US Census Bureau study It found that up to 72% of STEM graduates in America don't even work in STEM-related fields. So is it about a labor shortage or is it about 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 a severance check? The 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 come with restrictive conditions, receive lower wages, work longer hours, and cannot leave their jobs without risking deportation. They also come hoping to become citizens and bring their families through chain migration. It is a rigged game, designed to create cheap labor and make competition impossible for American citizens.
David Marcus: The MAGA H-1B “civil war” is exactly how politics is supposed to work
Ramaswamy says the problem is not mass immigration, but American culture itself. We need these foreign workers, he says, because our culture has “venerated mediocrity” for decades. We're celebrating prom queen over math champion. Your honor is the valedictorian.
It's a convenient theory, but it completely misses the point.
American culture is not the issue. Its destruction is the crux of the problem. American culture gave the world electricity, airplanes, cars, Elvis, the Internet, Rocky Balboa, and…star wars“What we are witnessing now is not the failure of American culture, but the willful erosion of it — a campaign of demoralization fueled by decades of mass immigration and an education system poisoned by cultural Marxism — an ideology that is foreign and utterly un-American.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are competitive men, and their desire for America to win the global game against our adversaries seems sincere. But the question is, what is your definition of winning? At whose expense should the game be played? (Getty Images)
Defaming party queens and promoting “last America” visa policies will not restore our greatness. It is a distraction from the real issue: the dismantling of our national identity, the takeover of our schools by communist activists, and the devaluation of American labor.
Click here for more Fox News opinions
Constitution It tells us that the highest duty of our government is to “promote the general welfare” and “secure to the American people the blessings of liberty.” There was a time when America kept that promise. During his travels through America in the early 19th century, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America is great because America is good.
Unfortunately, we are replacing goodness with atheism. Some of the new MAGA members are Silicon Valley atheists who envision for us a future of cold technology and corporations, a future that fails to value the humanity and vulnerability of our citizens.
Secularism, transhumanism and artificial intelligence will never satisfy the soul. America needs GodFamily, love, and returning to real, not virtual, relationships. This includes the relationship between citizens and their government – a government that truly cares about them and puts them first.
The solution to our problems does not lie in importing 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 is intentionally broken in our culture and institutions.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
America is not a sports team, and winning 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 history and Christian 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.”
