A broad pattern in American history is that business interests often sought immigrant labor while simultaneously supporting policies that kept those same immigrants socially and politically marginalized. That’s because immigrant workers in America historically have been viewed primarily as a source of cheap labor rather than as future citizens:

• John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (1985)
• Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004)
• Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (2004)
• Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (2002)
• David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991)
• Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2001)

Leland Stanford, perhaps the most obvious and odious example of this history, expressed strong anti-Chinese views while serving as Governor of California (1862-1863). He campaigned on tight restrictions on immigration, such as in his 1862 inaugural address to the California Legislature when he officially spoke against the Chinese by using horribly racist terms.

Then, as the president of the Central Pacific Railroad, he sought out and employed thousands of immigrant Chinese workers. After undermining their social status with racist campaigns, he paid them significantly less than white workers and subjected them to much more dangerous working conditions (a “China man’s minute” came to refer to insufficient time to avoid being killed by dynamite).

We see clearly today that the immigrant Chinese, who were being hired by the avowed anti-immigrant anti-Chinese Stanford, made up about 90% of his workforce five years later by 1867.

This was a very cruelly curated formula of oppression. Railing against immigration by declaring Chinese a threat, while relying heavily on increased use of Chinese labor, was actually common in California business ethics that later evolved into… internment camps.

California businessmen swept through the state whenever they saw fit, seizing land and assets from non-white families using mass deportations or incarceration. White male executives and politicians wanted access to cheap non-white immigrant labor, while blocking prosperity and fair competition practices. Restrictions based on race forced specific workers into a subordinate economic position meant to prevent them from gaining political power or establishing permanent communities. Should the Chinese or any other Asians manage to avoid these harsh political headwinds, let alone the fate suffered by other non-white communities, they often would be burned to the ground (e.g. Elaine 1919, Tulsa 1921).

That’s the proper context from history that explains why today President Musk has told his assistant Trump that he needs immigrants to work in his companies, while loudly campaigning against immigration.

It’s a throwback to overtly racist and fraudulent business practices very common in America, as Stanford so clearly demonstrated to the world as his route to prosperity and outsized legacy.

The relationship between business interests and immigration policy has evolved significantly since Stanford’s era. While modern H-1B visas, unlike historical patterns of pure exploitation, were explicitly designed as pathways to citizenship and include significant worker protections. Workers earn high wages ($108,000 median) and have contributed critically to American innovation – for example, eight companies that developed COVID-19 vaccines brought in over 3,300 scientists through the program.

However, elements of worker vulnerability persist in more subtle forms. While H-1B differs dramatically from historical exploitation in offering citizenship pathways and legal protections, visa dependency can still affect workers’ ability to advocate for themselves or freely change jobs. The solution isn’t restricting this vital immigration pathway – which would only hurt immigrant communities and American innovation – but rather strengthening worker protections and making the path to permanent residency more secure.

So when we see companies simultaneously seeking H-1B talent while opposing reforms that would reduce visa holder vulnerability, we’re seeing a more complex modern echo of historical patterns. Not in wages or working conditions, which have improved dramatically, but in how immigration status can still be leveraged to maintain workplace control. The answer isn’t repeating historical mistakes of restriction, but rather expanding and protecting immigrant workers’ rights and accelerating their path to citizenship.

Who proudly wears a Stanford hat or sweatshirt today? Who puts Stanford on their resume? Silicon Valley is full of such people. It would be like traveling to Munich and seeing a “Hitler” brand on everyone’s clothing. Not an exaggeration, if we make a direct comparison between the two men. Stanford curated genocide, setup killing machines, the likes of which Hitler was inspired to recreate 100 years later.

As California’s governor, after overseeing Indian affairs, Stanford participated in and led state policies during a period of what historians now recognize as genocide against Native Americans.

During this period (particularly the 1850s-1860s), California’s Native American population declined catastrophically through:

• State-sponsored militia raids and bounties
• Forced relocation and displacement from lands
• Disease
• Starvation from destruction of food sources
• State policies that facilitated and incentivized killing of Native people

While Stanford made it intentionally difficult to provide an exact number that died specifically under his governance (infamous for cooked books and extensive business fraud), the overall death toll of California Indians during this period was devastating.

Historians estimate at least 120,000 native people (majority of the popupation) suffered an early death from 1846 to 1870 through direct violence, starvation, and disease.

Stanford specifically supported and helped implement policies that:

• Provided state funding for militia campaigns against Native people
• Enabled settler seizure of Native lands
• Restricted Native rights and movement
• Allowed forced indenture and essentially slavery of Native children

That probably sounds familiar to Americans who study Nazi Germany.

Moreover, Stanford verbally supported what he called “extermination” as a final solution to what he termed the “Indian problem.”

Can you imagine selling genocidal brands and logos of a Hitler University? America prevented such atrocious marketing from happening in Germany, yet has done nothing of the kind at home.

The difficulty in providing exact numbers stems partly from the fact that Stanford kept deaths undocumented through a loophole in responsibility across multiple state and local authorities. However, it is undisputed that Stanford was the key figure in implementing and maintaining the broader system of violence against immigrants as well as California native populations that reverberated for at least 50 years (e.g. foundation of California forced internment camps in 1942).

The systematic nature of Stanford’s approach to racial exploitation went beyond immediate economic gains – it helped establish enduring institutional frameworks for discriminatory labor practices in California. His influential position as both governor and railroad tycoon allowed him to create what historians call a “dual labor market” – one that deliberately segmented workers along racial lines while maintaining plausible deniability through ostensibly race-neutral policies.

This system’s sophistication lay in how it interwove private business interests with state power, creating legal and social structures that could survive long after individual policies were officially repealed. The Central Pacific Railroad’s practice of maintaining separate payroll systems and work crews became a model for other California industries, establishing patterns of employment discrimination that would persist well into the 20th century.

Hitler, more to the point, recognized this system when he specifically cited American race laws as a model for German discrimination underpinning genocide. The Nazi regime sent researchers to study American systems of racial oppression to help design their own policies.

• James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (2017)
• Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (1999)

Stanford’s specific contributions that influenced Nazi Germany included:

• His model of exploiting targeted racial groups for labor while denying them rights
• His implementation of systematic genocide against Native Americans
• His development of state mechanisms to facilitate and fund mass killing
• His “extermination” rhetoric and “final solution” framing
• His methods of distributing responsibility to obscure death counts
• His combination of business interests with state power to enable genocide

Trying to build walls and distinctions between Stanford and Hitler minimizes an important direct historical connection and influence that is seldom acknowledged. Stanford’s policies and actions weren’t just similar to Nazi practices, they helped inspire and inform them… as well as Elon Musk.

Musk, a South African naturalized U.S. citizen who at one point in time held an H1-B visa [now dictating orders to his assistant Trump] … voiced support for bringing skilled foreign workers into the U.S.

The history is instrumental in understanding why a young man fled the fall of South African apartheid in 1988 with giant bags of cash to launder as an illegal immigrant to America. He saw the shameful exploitative legacy of Stanford as a stepping stone for his future destiny. Today he is expressing many of the same ideas that historians recognize as the worst in history.

Tesla and Twitter, as two clear examples, already have been gutted of worker rights and filled with immigrants being held in precariously weak jeopardy by Musk. The premise is eerily similar to his family’s architecture of South African apartheid: his staff must accept unfair work without complaints, or be deported or worse.

As an illegal immigrant himself Elon Musk now rants publicly about the threat from immigrants, all the while saying he will go to war to ensure he can hire more immigrants to discriminate against and exploit. It’s the kind of self-dealing extreme contradiction that reminds me of another time and place.

For Longolongo, the fact that his mother was Tutsi and that he’d had Tutsi friends became a justification for his actions; he felt he had to make a public spectacle of his executions, to avoid suspicions that he was overly sympathetic toward the enemy. He feared that if he didn’t demonstrate his commitment to the Hutu-power cause, his family would be slaughtered. And so he kept killing. He killed his neighbors. He killed his mother’s friend. He killed the children of his sister’s godmother. All while he was hiding eight Tutsi in his mother’s house. Such contradictions were not uncommon in Rwanda.

Don’t miss the signals. Beware the obvious signs. Learn your history.

We keep making these same stupid mistakes over and over again as Americans because we don’t seem to appreciate history the way that other countries do.

Work hard to prevent repeat disasters.

[Stanford] was elected as California’s eighth governor when his business partners effectively bought the job for him after he had lost four previous election campaigns by embarrassing margins. His crowning achievement was the completion of the transcontinental railway, a feat [of horrible immigrant exploitation] financed by the federal government with loans he never repaid.

Angry anti-immigrant man in transit company has huge loans he never repaid? Sounds very familiar.

Elon Musk, Who Wants To Stop People ‘Taking Advantage Of Government,’ Had $830,000 In Federal Loans Forgiven

A performative anti-immigrant stance while simultaneously exploiting immigrant labor to steal taxpayer money is particularly striking, as it illustrates contradictions that signal deep and very dangerous systemic issues.