Jonathan Keeperman (Lomez)
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Charlie, it is great to be here. Thanks so much for having me on. It's an honor to be here. I've been watching your show for a long time. I think you've done some amazing work helping to build this America first Trump coalition. And you deserve a lot of credit for what you've done. So, you know, this is great to be here and share this audience with you.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah. So, you know, this is a very healthy debate and I'm glad we're having it. I've seen, you know, a lot of hot air on Twitter and certainly some feelings have gotten hurt and people have said some things that I'm sure they regret or wish they could take back. But it's good to get this all out in the open.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
You know, one thing we saw over the last six months to a year with Trump getting elected was bringing on these new coalition partners from Silicon Valley in the tech world. This includes Elon Musk. This includes the guys in the All In podcast. This includes Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, of course. And I think to some extent, this new, you know,
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
an American first policy with regards to labor policy for the Trump coalition. And they got out over their skis a little bit over the weekend supporting H-1Bs. And now, you know, you're seeing a lot of pushback from people on the right instructing them about why this is a bad idea, about how there are actually better workarounds than just
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
importing an infinite amount of H-1Bs from places around the world, primarily India, but elsewhere too, that we can actually build out our own labor supply for high-tech, high-skilled jobs that doesn't require importing people at lower wages to do that for us. And it's a fairly simple fix. And I think these guys are starting to figure that out and retreat a little bit from that position.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
And we're going to reform this coalition based on this new understanding. So that's the broad overview.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah, so it's a worthwhile argument to take seriously. And I think it starts with a bit of disagreement over the premise and what it means for America to quote unquote win. From an American first perspective, America winning means the flourishing of the American people inside of America. And that takes precedent over the people of the rest of the world.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
That doesn't mean we have to neglect or be hostile to the rest of the world. but America winning means American people flourishing. And the difference between Trump and the MAGA right and all that has come before, at least in my adult lifetime, is the priority on American people. So I want to emphasize that first. That's what comes first.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Now, winning the AI race, winning the tech race is super important. And I don't want to make that subservient to all other concerns. But it is very important. The way we do that is by bringing in absolutely necessary world class talent. I don't think there's anybody on the MAGA right who wants to prevent people like Elon Musk from coming into the country.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
People like, you know, Werner Von Braun, Einstein, John von Neumann. You know, the people from Operation Paperclip, the people who helped to get us to the moon, for example, we want to bring in that world class talent. But there is a huge difference here between that world class talent that can't be replaced by your average worker.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
And then a guy working some entry-level job for $70,000, that can be an American job for Americans. So I think something that's happening here is this conflation between this extreme level of talent that Elon Musk and others, including people on the MAGA right, want to bring into the country. And then just the flood of replacement level, mediocre talent, engineering talent,
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
that can easily be replaced and be done by American workers. And we want to preserve those jobs for Americans.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Absolutely. And this is the other thing. There is nothing the American people cannot out-compete the rest of the world on, given a truly level playing field for the American worker and for American talent to rise to the top.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Something we've seen over the last decades with affirmative action, with disparate impact hiring, with the absolute degradation and breakdown of our higher ed system, with hiring practices, with caps on white men in management, white men on boards. We have actively suppressed our talent over the course of several decades.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
And all we need to do is take the knee off the neck of the white American worker and the American worker broadly, and we will see all the talent we need. Now, again, there may be some room to bring in other world-class talent from elsewhere, but the American people, if nothing else, have proven over the decades that we can do anything we set our mind to and anything we set our talent to.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah. And, you know, I have to say it's been very heartening, the fact that these tech guys who put forward these H-1B positions want to hear what we have to say. They understand on some level that they don't get it and are willing to listen. And I give them a lot of credit for that.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
And I do actually trust that there's a lot of mutual interest here and that this coalition can stay together despite some disagreements over this H-1B question. And what I'd say is simply from the time that Trump came down the escalator in 2016, when he announced his run initially, the thing he was running on was immigration. And it was preserving America and its inheritance and its largesse.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
for the American people. That is what MAGAism at bottom is based on. It's based on preserving an America that we know and understand and is the greatest country in the world, preserving its country and preserving its people and its wealth for its people. What this H-1B issue does is cut directly against that fundamental position that gave rise to MAGA in the first place.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Now, we can haggle over some of the details and how we negotiate around identifying talent. But what the tech right needs to understand is this coalition exists. MAGA exists. Trump exists. Because of this question over immigration, we fought for decades on this issue. We have finally won a resounding victory here in 2024, and we don't intend to relent today.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
on this issue now just because these tech guys need a couple of engineers in their department. This is going to be something we fight on. It's something we care about, and it's something they need to understand as a fundamental issue for the MAGA right.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah, yeah, I would love to. Yeah, please go to Passage.Press. In the spirit of this show, we have a promo code PATRIOT. For free shipping on all our books, there you'll find Steve Saylor, who's written a ton about immigration, Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, and others. Please go buy some books.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah, this is such an important component to this because you're talking about the talent development pipeline here. And ultimately, what gets manifest at the level of hiring decisions is determined by that talent development pipeline that should be our higher education system. I worked in the UC system at UC Irvine in R1 University. That's a main research university.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
We develop a ton of STEM talent. Here's a few facts for the people listening. When I was there through 2012 to 2022, we had over 20% of our undergraduate population were foreign-born nationals. By the time I left in 2022, and anybody can go look this up, there were more foreign-born nationals at UC Irvine than there were white males or whites generally.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Now, there has been a massive displacement of the population of that these universities are intended to serve by these foreign nationals. There's a bunch of complicated cultural and economic reasons why that's the case. These foreign nationals, for example, pay sometimes two, even three times much in terms of tuition than native-born students.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
And so the universities are incentivized to bring them in. But whatever the explanation, this obviously has to change. We need to recommit our higher ed institutions to developing our own native born talent and pushing them into these fields that are in such high demand from tech world. And that is a solution here. Now, to be fair, I have to concede that there's going to be some time lag.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
This isn't the kind of policy that you implement tomorrow, and then the next day, the results are in front of you. There's going to be years in which this talent development pipeline needs to be reconfigured but that doesn't mean we don't do it that doesn't mean we take a shortcut and instead just throw up our hands and say this can't be done we're going to take in all these foreign h1bs instead
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Yeah, I mean, we're told two competing things here. On the one hand, AI is going to make all of these low skill tech engineering jobs obsolete. The computers are going to do it themselves. We're told that. But then on the other hand, we're told we need to bring in. all of these H1Bs to fill those low skill or modestly skilled engineering coding jobs. Those things don't add up.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
Now, I'm not a tech expert. I'm not an AI. So I can't tell you how real this is, how much of this is just sort of a rhetorical window dressing in order to justify why we need to bring in this cheap labor. I'm willing to take these guys at their word. but something doesn't add up here and they need to explain this. And I just want to end on this final point.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
This is not about bringing in better talent. This is about bringing in cheaper talent. And if we're going to have this conversation, I want us to be honest about that fact.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Breaking Down the Great H-1B Battle
I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.