Recent revelations have confirmed that Amazon, Google, Facebook, and other tech firms are actively requesting foreign worker H-1B visas this year. The implications of this move suggest that Americans are being subverted by tech companies that would rather hire workers for a fraction of the pay.
In response, Jack Posobiec, of Human Events Daily, said: "What we need, going forward, is to shut this [H-1B visas] down. You absolutely have to have a cap on H-1B visas; it should be as low as possible."
He went on to suggest that there is no reason to have thousands of these applications passing through each year, but they should instead reserve a very small amount of these visas for the most educated and intelligent experts in the field. Big tech companies like Google, he said "are replacing American workers with cheaper foreign labor."
Posobiec cited reporting by Journalist Lee Fang wrote on his Substack that Chief Executive of Google, Sundar Pichai, had recently filed applications for low-paid foreign workers to come to the US to occupy highly specialized tech jobs. This comes just one month after Pichai published a dire letter that read: “I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles.”
“We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”
Now, Google has filed dozens of applications for workers to occupy prominent positions, such as analytical consultants, software engineers, user experience researchers, and other specialized roles. This, of course, raises questions about the incentive for Americans involved in STEM fields, whose opportunities dwindle when tech companies seek out cheap labor from outside the country.
"They're getting rid of the American workers," Posobiec said, but DOL documents shows that Google has put in thousands of applications for H1B workers to take the tech jobs they have taken from Americans.
Fang said that Silicon Valley has "gamed the foreign visa system, using tens of thousands of H-1B visa workers to pay lower wages and squeeze their American native-born workforce."
However, Google is not the only company to be filing applications for foreign worker visas. Data recently released by the Department of Labor revealed that several companies which have undergone massive layoffs are now looking for foreign workers, including Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoom, and Facebook, per Fang.
The seemingly commonplace practice of tech companies laying off highly qualified American workers in exchange for foreign workers is a betrayal of how the H-1B program is supposed to function. The program was initially set up as a way for companies to seek out talent when there were no American workers that could fill the position. It has now turned into a subversive mechanism by which tech companies can hike profits by paying lower wages to foreign workers, while simultaneously pinching the American workforce.
Fang reported that the H-1B “is easily exploited by employers who aren’t required to test the US labor market to see if any workers are available before hiring an H1-B replacement.”
Bloomberg reported in January that there were 35 tech companies in the Chicago regions that were actively seeking out H-1B workers to fill “speciality occupations such as software engineering,” but it has to make one wonder how American companies hiring cheap labor could affect economic inflation around the country, which ultimately hurts American citizens.
But it does not appear that the American worker is a concern for many of these firms, as the Economic Policy Institute reported that “rather than turning to the H-1B program as a last resort when US workers cannot be found, most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer.”
Fang noted that former President Donald Trump had apparently filed a lawsuit against Facebook over allegations that it had discriminated against American-born workers in favor of workers hired through the H-1B program. The lawsuit resulted in Facebook having to pay a $4.75 million fine and reportedly promised up to $9.5 million to eligible victims.
