12-30-24

Ok….I’m about to make an analogy that might rankle some feathers…..there’s a

lot of debate out there right now about H1-B visas…..if you’re not familiar the H1-

B is a special visa that under certain circumstances allows an employer to apply

for a foreign national to be hired to work in the US because they have some

unique skill or qualification or level of expertise that can’t otherwise be found in

the US……it gives US employers ostensibly the opportunity to get the best of the

best from the world hiring pool as opposed to being just confined to the hiring

pool here in the US of A……there’s pros and cons…..I mean think about

it……Baseball is an international sport but it was invented in America…..Baseball in

America is still a multi-billion dollar enterprise with fans spending good money for

tickets to watch their favorite team play for the pennant…..but should American

baseball only be allowed to hire American born players?.....well, what if they were

born somewhere else but played college ball while they got their degree in

America?.....hmmmm…..or what if, a team owner want’s to make a play for the

pennant but he needs the best designated hitter money can hire…..but that guy

happens to be Shohei Ohtani who plays in a Japanese league and doesn’t even

speak English?......but Shohei Ohtani, arguably the best player in all of

professional baseball in the whole wide world, now plays for the LA Dodgers and

is now heralded with helping his American team to the World Series where he

was named the MVP……Ohtani is a dual-threat pitcher and hitter who is already

being compared to names like Babe Ruth but he’s playing an American made

sport, on an American team, in America’s greatest national championship

game…….but he’s not from here…..he’s not a US citizen……couldn’t some other

American born player have taken his spot?......short answer, No……the owners of

the Dodgers saw no way to find someone of his caliber and they needed his

expertise so they went abroad and it paid off and not a single Dodgers fan regrets

that decision…….but let me make another analogy….let me take it down another

road…..literally…..

If you’ve listened to this show for even a little while you know that I’m a car

guy….a frustrated car guy, because I don’t have a classic car to mess around with

right now, but a car guy nonetheless…..particularly, I love classic American made

muscle cars….if I had a dream car garage it would contain a Grabber Blue 1970

Mustang Mach 1 with a 351 Cleveland, close ratio toploader transmission mated

to a Hurst t-handled shifter……generally speaking I’m a Ford guy……first on race

day and all that……but there are others outside the blue oval family that I have my

eye on……a Mach 1 Mustang would look really good next to a 71 Hemi Cuda with

a pistol grip shifter in the console…….have I thought about this? Yes!.....so my first

car has been talked about on this show multiple times…..my first baby had four

wheels…..a ’68 Mustang coupe with a 289…..I loved that car…..drove it all through

High School and college…..eventually life took over and Charlene and I parted

with it to help pay for married life with an new “real” baby……I still have a picture

of it on the shelf in my office…..but here’s where I get into my analogy…..in the

car world there are different versions of car guys…..there are those who believe

that no classic car should ever be touched to the extent possible….they believe in

collecting what are known as “survivors” with original paint, matching numbers

on the engine, and no changes from original……then there are those who are

“restorers” who believe that putting a car back to its original state in a pure and

unadulterated manner is the ultimate in car culture, right down to the labels, nuts

and bolts and hoses……then there the “restomods”…..the guys who see a car and

want to make it look and run great but want more from it than what the factory

could provide……

My first baby would have to be called a restomod…..I restored the interior to

factory stock but installed an aftermarket sound system….I kept the original

wheelcovers in a box in the garage because I thought it looked better with some

classic chrome Cragar mags…..I kept the original 289 cubic inch V8 but I wanted

more performance so I opted to have it bored .30 over, added an Edelbrock

aluminum intake, a Holley 4-barrel carb, a Crane cam and Hooker Headers

running out to dual exhaust……what am I telling you all of this for? Because I saw

a classic car that I loved but I wanted more than I could get from the factory so I

went elsewhere and got parts and performance that I wanted…..it ran like a

scalded dog….it sounded mean when I fired it up…..it turned heads…..and it made

me happy…..and one day I will get back to another classic car…..I’m sure of it…..

But that my friends is the H1-B visa program in a nutshell……suddenly out of

nowhere there is debate raging among the right side of the political aisle about

whether or not the H1 program needs to be shut down…..Elon Musk says no way!

He says that Tesla and SpaceX wouldn’t be here today if he had only been able to

hire from within the United States…..he needed more than what he could find

here at home so he also hired from abroad……He’s got a point and Vivek

Ramaswamy has joined him in the argument……to use my car analogy Musk and

Ramasamy are into restomods…..take what they’ve got and add more to it from

sources that are not purist and confined…..but Musk went too far when he said

that anyone who doesn’t like the H1-B program is a racist! Come on…..just

because you like restomods doesn’t mean someone else can’t have a Concours

level full restoration using only factory parts……

But there are those who say that the H1-B visa program is rife with fraud and

corruption and they would also be right……there are constant and very recent

stories in the news of abuses of the H1 program by employers forging documents

to bring in cheap foreign labor at the expense of American workers……they

deserve to go to jail but the H1 system needs to be looked at as well…..American

workers should never have to be faced with not being able to get work because

someone gamed the system and used a false pretense to give a leg up to a

foreigner over an American……but the calls are out right now to shut down the

H1-B Visa system completely…..that is misguided and needs to be tamped down a

bit…..We cannot be so purist in our mentality that we imagine that there is no

one else in the world who can help us make something uniquely American even

better than it is right now……keep in mind that the US space and missile program

lagged behind the efforts of German engineers from the middle of the last

century……so what did we do?.....we brought over Werner Von Braun and a team

of German scientists…..they set up their new homes right here in Huntsville,

Alabama and they joined with other highly skilled and highly qualified US

engineers and scientists and they put a man on the moon…..they took America

into the space age and built a city called Huntsville, Alabama from a small semi-

rural cotton town to the fastest growing center of 21 st century technology……Von

Braun had been building rockets for our enemies……but we brought him over

anyway and put him to work for us and the world was changed for the

better…..the difference was that we didn’t fire American workers to get a cheap

version of a scientist……Von Braun joined American experts….he had a skillset that

we didn’t fully have…..he had expertise and experience that we did not

have…..we wanted to innovate and explore and grow and build and we needed a

German expert to come in and help us get there……but we did it in a way that

made sense…..THAT is the difference……

So yes, if you believe that American products should only be built by American

workers…..I agree, to a point…..I agree to the point that we can do so in a way

that gets us there the fastest, cheapest, and highest quality possible so that the

consumer benefits from it……but if we have a missing link…..if we lack some piece

of expertise or experience and some person in a foreign country is willing to leave

their homeland to come make ours better then let’s figure it out…..if you’re trying

to game the system and get one over on your own country by hiring cheap foreign

labor then maybe you need to go to jail and I’m all for you spending that time

behind bars….but if you own a company that can’t find someone to fill a gap in

your capabilities and it takes looking abroad then why do I care?......just don’t

cheat America in the process……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way