Debate Club

H1Bs, who has a voice, what does the tech right want, what does MAGA want, and why arguing about it is good akshually

The dust is beginning to settle on the Great Christmas H1B Debate of 2024. It’s been quite a ride. Much has been revealed. The coda to this episode won’t come for months, maybe a year, or even more, once the policy is actually decided, and even then D.C. will do its thing to obstruct and push back and there will be another round of horse trading before anything gets implemented. No matter how much you think you’ve won, and you have won, the reality of the bigger problem of American government will have its say, too. Clearpills only.

No matter that final outcome, now is a good time to do a post-mortem on this episode since it feels unique in many ways and is likely to be replayed over and over again in the coming years. There are some important lessons to be taken from the last several days—the arguments and the meta arguments and the manner in which the arguments happened—so taking a snapshot of it all while it is still fresh may be useful down the road.

1. You Matter

Firstly, dear humble poaster, YOU ARE IN THE ARENA. There is a shopworn notion, mostly leveled by a kind of teenage goth above-it-all style of thinker hiding his own insecurities in his edgy performative indifference, that says whatever is happening on X is only fun and games, politically irrelevant, and that you are shouting into the void (don’t ask him what exactly he’s shouting into by pointing this out). In any case, if you still believe that, there is no hope for you. These lesser posters, those who failed the test of the election or who feel embittered about their own modest audience relative to larger accounts will insist that anons are wasting their time with this stuff. Don’t believe them.

You can take my word for it.¹ The things you are saying are being read and considered by the people who matter. X discourse is not just trivial recreation. These ideas trickle up. The tweets themselves trickle up. They land in the laps of the people in Palm Beach and D.C. You are being heard. Your objections are being noted. Your good arguments improve the chances of the things you want to see happen actually happening. Your bad arguments hurt those chances. Policy is getting hashed out in real time and you have a say in it.

And in large part Elon Musk is to thank for this. None of this is possible without Musk buying Twitter and reforming it into the platform he promised to make it: the vehicle for free speech and real debate, the digital public square. Whatever your differences with the man, don’t lose sight of that. He is owed a tremendous amount of deference and respect. Elon, thank you.