Big Tech Continues Mass Layoffs While Hiring Thousands of Foreign W...

By Hudson Crozier

What’s happening: America’s biggest tech companies are laying off thousands of employees while hiring thousands of foreigners for less pay, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. They do this through the H-1B program, which grants work visas to immigrants for jobs requiring a high degree of specialty and merit, usually in STEM fields.

Why it matters: Congress created the H-1B program in 1965 to address labor shortages. However, companies that aren’t suffering such needs exploit the program by replacing American workers for the sake of profit since H-1B workers get paid less. This impacts hundreds of thousands of American STEM graduates each year, especially those with costly tech-related degrees, who struggle to find and keep these already coveted jobs because they must also compete with troves of noncitizens.

By the numbers: The EPI’s data show that the top 30 H-1B employers in the U.S., which include Amazon, Google, and Meta, are in the process of laying off almost 85,000 workers from the start of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, they have imported over 34,000 H-1B workers.

A longstanding issue: Former President Donald Trump tried to reform the H-1B program to prioritize American workers, but many of his regulatory changes were blocked by judges or reversed by the Biden administration. Last month, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a bipartisan bill to restrict the program to avoid the “outsourcing” of American labor. The issue of foreigners taking jobs for less pay goes as far back as the progressive workers’ rights protests of the 1960s.

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Joy Carlson1 year ago

Employers should not be allowed to exploit these Visas. Hire Americans that are qualified first. That being said, as long as our education system continues to decline, Americans will have a hard time competing in STEM fields.

Catherine Bogucki1 year ago

H-1B needs reforms. Limits on how many foreign workers and set a quota on the ratio of American workers to foreign, with the largest being Americans first

Ken McEwen1 year ago

I agree with Catherine B. that the H-1B program needs reforms. Make companies that request the Visas pay a high price to get these workers so that even if they pay the foreign workers less that the overall cost will be significantly more then if they hired and American worker. Also look into the government workers who rubber stamp these visas without actually looking to see if there is really a shortage in the fields they are filling.

Jim Dee1 year ago

I fully support meritocracy in employment. If we need STEM folks, foreign or domestic, to remain competitive let the law of supply & demand work. At the same time we need to offer scholarships to our best & brightest along with letters of intent to work in fields of economic need, using DOL BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Now, I get page 2, the rest of the story. Congress needs to safeguard citizens from profiteering via H1-B, and penalize those companies that hire foreigners and layoff citizens with like skills

Jonathan Horen1 year ago

H-1B visas are only the tip of the iceberg (tip of the spear might be better, though), in that it allows for the physical "importation" of foreign workers in high-tech/STEM fields. But there's more: All the foreign workers who remain abroad, while working remotely for US-based companies. I'm talking about Customer Service, Technical Support, etc. -- all of the people with whom we speak, who are located in telephone call-centers. And there's still more: The white-collar workers -- accounting and other "back-office" staff, along with all levels of programmers and systems engineers. ALL of them displace American workers... and these jobs are never coming back home.