Vivek Ramaswamy’s Silicon Valley Fundraiser Tickets To Cost Nearly $50,000

A luncheon will be hosted by Silicon Valley business executives this Friday, September 29, to raise funds for Republican presidential candidate and Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy. According to reports, the "intimate dinner and discussion" with Ramaswamy will take place at the home of Social Capital investor and CEO Chamath Palihapitiya in the San Francisco Bay Area. The invitation also lists Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital, as well as well-known cryptocurrency investors Matt Huang and Katie Haun. According to the invitation, which was shared by Puck journalist Teddy Schleifer on X, the cost of attending the event would begin at $50,000.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy criticized the popular H-1B visa program for the second time, arguing that the current "lottery" system should be "gutted" and replaced with a "meritocratic" skill-based immigration strategy to fulfill US demands. As per the reports, It's the same method he's used before to bring in foreign nationals with advanced skills for the pharmaceutical firm that generated much of his fortune.

Ramaswamy's prior firm, Roivant Sciences, was granted 29 H-1B visas from 2018 to 2023 by US Citizenship and Immigration Services. These visas enable US corporations to recruit foreign workers in tech and other specialized occupations. Ramaswamy told Politico, "The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll get it."

In 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant, a pharmaceutical business. However, he remained head of the board until this year, when he launched his candidacy for president. He further told the outlet, "The people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skills-based contributions to this country." When challenged about the discrepancy between the Republican presidential candidate's policy position and his business practices, Tricia McLaughlin, the candidate's press secretary, replied that a policymaker's job "is to do what's right for a country overall: the system is broken and needs to be fixed."

Ramaswamy's position on H-1B visas is similar to that of Donald Trump's during the 2016 Trump campaign. Trump, like Ramaswamy, has recruited a lot of foreign employees under H-1B visas for his enterprises. As president, Trump temporarily halted the issuing of work visas, thus barring hundreds of thousands of foreign employees from entering the United States.

In a policy address earlier this month, Ramaswamy claimed he planned to lay off 75 percent of the federal workforce and abolish several departments and agencies. The Department of Education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Nutrition Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives are just some of the federal agencies that Mr. Ramaswamy has sworn to abolish.

His argument echoed that of his idol, former President Donald J. Trump, who also wanted more political influence on the federal workforce at the end of his administration. Similar to Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy has referred to elements of the federal government as the "deep state."