THE BILLIONAIRE'S BANQUET
HOW TRUMP TRADED MAGA'S LUNCH FOR H-1B HORS D'OEUVRES
Ah, the White House dinner party—where the silverware is sterling, the stakes are sky-high, and the guest list reads like a Forbes 400 fever dream crossed with a *Game of Thrones* casting call. This week, in a move that would make Marie Antoinette blush (if she weren't too busy losing her head), President Donald J. Trump hosted a soiree for Mohammed bin Salman—MBS to his friends, "The Bone Saw Guy" to those still haunted by Jamal Khashoggi's last column. The menu? Probably gold-leafed lamb kebabs and deals sealed with Saudi petrodollars. The agenda? A crash course in Immigration 101, courtesy of America's oligarchy: the billionaires, the tech titans, and the manufacturing moguls who flew in on private jets fueled by the very tax breaks Trump once promised to claw back.
Picture it: crystal chandeliers twinkling like the eyes of venture capitalists spotting a loophole. Trump, fresh from his "America First" victory lap, leans in as Elon Musk (or was it Jeff Bezos? They're all starting to blur into one algorithmically enhanced beard) whispers sweet nothings about supply chains. "Donnie," they coo, "we're ready to drop *billions* on U.S. soil—chip factories in Arizona, gigafactories in Ohio, AI labs that make Skynet look like a lemonade stand. But here's the rub: your red-blooded Americans? They're *demanding* things. Weekends off. Overtime pay. Unions that don't fold like a cheap suit. And heaven forbid they complain about 80-hour weeks in windowless server farms. We need *talent* that says 'yes, sir' and means it—for *peanuts*." Enter the H-1B visa: the golden ticket for foreign workers who won't unionize, won't sue, and won't even blink at a non-compete clause longer than *War and Peace*.
Trump, ever the dealmaker, didn't just nod—he *evangelized*. "American workers suck!" he declared, or words to that effect, channeling his inner Marie Kondo by sparking joy only for the imported. "You can't just grab someone off the unemployment line and say, 'Poof! You're a missile engineer!'" No, indeed. Why train a Yank when you can lottery in a coder from Bangalore who's been grinding since kindergarten and considers a 401(k) a luxury? "This is MAGA," Trump insisted, rebranding his movement like a Kardashian slapping her name on a scentless candle. MAGA, it turns out, now stands for "Make America Great Again... with Guest Workers." The base? They're howling "Where is my president?" like lost puppies at a Purina plant. JD Vance, that hillbilly elegist turned veep, is side-eyeing the whole affair, while X (formerly Twitter) erupts in a civil war of red hats and rage emojis.
But let's rewind the tape, because this isn't a plot twist—it's a sequel. Remember when MAGA's secret sauce was the fiery sermon against the very oligarchs now toasting Trump with vintage Scotch? "They shipped our jobs to China! To Mexico! To anywhere with lax child labor laws!" Trump thundered in 2016, fists pumping like a conductor leading the Rust Belt Symphony. Unions broken, factories shuttered, American dream deferred—all in pursuit of that holy grail: *cheap labor*. The billionaires didn't just offshore manufacturing; they exported the middle class itself, turning "Made in America" into a punchline on a "I ❤️ NY" T-shirt made in Bangladesh. And now? The reverse migration. The oligarchy's circling back, briefcases bulging with billions, but only if Uncle Sam plays porter with the H-1B program. It's like *The Godfather*, but instead of "an offer you can't refuse," it's "an investment you can't refuse—unless you want your workers to want weekends."
To truly appreciate the poetry of this betrayal, trace the H-1B visa's sordid family tree. Born in 1990 amid the Immigration Act's bureaucratic Big Bang, it was sold as a lifeline for "specialty occupations"—think rocket scientists, not baristas with a side hustle in astrophysics. But oh, what a Trojan horse. Both parties, those bipartisan bookends of oligarchic bliss, schemed like poker players under the table. Bill Clinton, ever the triangulator, jacked the cap from 65,000 to 195,000 in 2000, just in time for the dot-com delirium. George W. Bush let it ride, turning Y2K fixes into a visa bonanza for Indian IT firms that treated "prevailing wage" like a suggestion. Obama? Steady as she goes, approvals ticking up as the renewal backlog ballooned into a backlog of *backlogs*—442,000 petitions greenlit in FY 2022 alone, mostly extensions for folks who'd been "temporary" longer than *The Simpsons*. Trump 1.0 played tough: "Buy American, Hire American," denial rates spiking to 24% like a bad acid trip for HR departments. Yet even then, the cap stayed cozy at 85,000, and tech giants like Infosys (top sponsor, naturally) kept the lottery rigged like a casino owned by the house.
Fast-forward to Trump 2.0, and the plot thickens like Saudi crude. September 2025: a $100,000 fee on new petitions, a "soft ban" that prices out startups but lets behemoths like Google shrug it off like a bar tab. It's genius, really—tough on paper, tender in practice. "We're protecting Americans!" Trump crows, while winking at the chip barons building fabs that need coders who'll code through the apocalypse. And the base? They're not buying it. "Globalist!" they yelp, as if Trump's been moonlighting as Klaus Schwab. The irony? H-1B's 65% tech skew means it's less "brain drain" from abroad and more "wage drain" at home—computer gigs dominating, with engineering and med labs as side dishes. Over half go to Indians, per Pew's dusty 2017 ledger, but who's counting when the real winners are the C-suites sipping from overflowing troughs?
So here we are, at the banquet's end: plates cleared, deals inked, MAGA left with crumbs. The oligarchy, that eternal vampire squid on the face of American labor, has sunk its tentacles deeper—first abroad, now home, H-1B as the delivery system for docile drudgery. Trump's not wrong about the talent gap; America's STEM pipeline leaks like a sieve. But fixing it means investing in *us*—vocational schools, not visas; unions, not lotteries. Instead, we're treated to this tragicomedy: a president who built his brand on "drain the swamp" now hosting a swamp gala where the alligators foot the bill.
In the end, it's the same old story, just with better lighting and worse optics. The billionaires invest, alright—as long as the labor's cheap, the hours endless, and the complaints muted. MAGA? They'll grumble, meme, maybe even revolt. But history whispers: the oligarchy always gets its entrée. Pass the salt, Donnie. And maybe a side of spine.
