The H-1B program is costing you your grandchildren. The Great Replacement is not a theory anymore. In Michigan, you could say it’s our lived experience.

Here’s how it works: A company—let’s say Whirlpool—wants to hire senior software engineers to work out of its Benton Harbor headquarters. 

It hires the engineers through a third party—say, Atos Syntel. Some make $70,000 a year, others make $80,000. 

But the going rate for a senior software engineer in West Michigan is well above $100,000. H-1B workers filling those roles make a lot less money.

This means one of two things. Both are bad for Michigan natives. 

It could mean that the engineer is not actually senior, and that he is filling an early-career role could go to one of the 5,000 new college graduates who leave Michigan every summer in search of the good jobs we supposedly don’t have. 

Or it could mean that the engineer actually is senior, and hiring an American of comparable skill would cost a lot more money. 

For two decades now, we have lamented Michigan’s brain-drain problem. Every year, thousands of our new college graduates take their degrees and earning potential to other states. If only there was something we could do to keep them!

We need cool cities, said Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

We need to build the 21st-century economy, said Gov. Rick Snyder. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer admitted she didn’t know what to do and put together a blue-ribbon panel to find answers. 

The panel came up empty, but the answer to our twin problems of brain drain and the talent gap is staring us in the face. If we want to keep our kids home, we need to kick our addiction to cheap labor. It’s not that the H-1B visa program is bad, it’s that we need a program just like it for Michigan residents.

Without the ability to import skilled workers, these firms say they can’t compete. And so since 2011 Michigan has taken in some 181,000 workers on H-1B visas. Just last year, Michigan took in another 11,600, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

We are told that these H-1Bs are top talents, but most people who’ve worked alongside an H-1B would tell you different.

Foreign credentials are easily faked or exaggerated. H-1Bs often need training on their arrival, often by the very people they will be replacing. Seniors aren’t senior. 

India, as Trump might say, does not send their best.

Meanwhile, Michigan is sending away our best and brightest. 

Some kids will always leave Michigan, but too many feel they have no choice. If every company that takes in H-1B workers instead offers three-year fellowships to Michigan natives, we wouldn’t have brain drain, and those companies wouldn’t have a skills gap.

In a state where only about 30% of adults have college degrees, H-1Bs are a leap in the wrong direction, toward a credentialism that puts Michiganders last. 

Our companies have no room for the smart kid with aptitude but without a degree—no way to meet him or bring him into the pipeline. Even our credentialed youth struggle to land that first job. 

The pipeline from Bangalore to Benton Harbor is flowing. The pipeline from Benton Harbor Public Schools to Whirlpool could use some work. 

H-1Bs are the easy way out. It’s not just cheap labor, it’s the cheapening of labor. 

It’s the same mentality that’s made Michigan the biggest loser of globalization.

We were told that globalization would lower the cost of goods; we got cheap Chinese crap. 

We were told that creative destruction would bring prosperity; we must’ve missed it. 

We were told that smart Indian workers could do what dumb Americans could not. Then we were sent IT guys who told you to turn the computer off, then turn it back on. 

For every foreign worker imported to Michigan, a college grad must leave, and someone without a credential gets overlooked. We’ve been taught to consider shareholder value, and to disregard our values. Conventional wisdom has failed us.

The choice before us is clear. Do you want the cheapest IT guy possible or for your son to get a job near home, meet a girl, and give you grandkids? 

Or do you like what you have now, where your family’s future happens elsewhere, and you see your legacy maybe twice a year?

It’s a nice thought that we can have both. But right now we are trading one for the other. And the grandparents of Michigan are the biggest losers. 

James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.