EXCLUSIVE: H-1B Visas Are The One Topic Vivek Ramaswamy Refuses To Talk About

MARIETTA, Ohio — You may remember him from the 2024 presidential debate stage or from cable news promoting his book on “woke,” but who really is Vivek Ramaswamy, and why does he want to run Ohio so badly?

To help answer this question, the Daily Caller News Foundation traveled to Marietta — a city of about 13,000 in the state’s Appalachian southeast — where the billionaire-turned-Republican Ohio gubernatorial nominee was holding a town hall with veterans and Gold Star families on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. After the event, the Cincinnati-born Ramaswamy sat for a 15-minute interview with his surgeon wife, Apoorva, at his side, during which he discussed a variety of topics, including the campaign, artificial intelligence, data centers and the impact of the war with Iran.

The entrepreneur’s chances of adding “governor-elect” to his already-long resume in November, however, are effectively a coin flip. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, for one, rates the race between Ramaswamy and his Democratic opponent — public health official Amy Acton — as a “toss up.”

An increasingly favorable midterm environment for Democrats is not the only hurdle Ramaswamy needs to overcome to realize his gubernatorial dream. Despite his landslide primary win and backing by Trump, the candidate still has his share of critics on the political right — particularly immigration hardliners — for his support for maintaining, albeit reforming, the country’s H-1B program. The program allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign nationals over American citizens for highly skilled “specialty occupations.”

On the day after Christmas 2024, Ramaswamy provoked criticism from conservatives when he joined the debate over the visas by arguing in a lengthy X post that many companies are forced to turn to foreign talent because “American culture has venerated mediocrity” for the past few decades. He pointed to Saturday morning cartoons and the popular 90s sitcom “Friends” as examples.

The DCNF sought to give Ramaswamy the opportunity to set the record straight on the issue but his campaign said prior to the interview that he does not answer questions on H-1B visas. The candidate himself confirmed this to the DCNF, and instead offered to discuss immigration policy “holistically” without mentioning the heavily-scrutinized guest worker program.

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“I think there’s two different views in the attitude towards success in our country,” the candidate told the DCNF. “On one view — the socialist view — success is a sin, something that we should penalize. On the actual American view — that’s my view — success is something that we should celebrate.”

“I want the success that I’ve enjoyed to be something that every kid and every family in the state can really enjoy as well,” Ramaswamy said.