Analysis: Big Tech Conducts Mass Layoffs While Importing 34,000 Foreign H-1B Workers to Take American Jobs
Silicon Valley’s biggest tech corporations are continuing mass layoffs in the United States, even as they import more than 34,000 foreign H-1B visa workers to take coveted white-collar jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields, new analysis shows.
The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), found that the top 30 tech corporations — which routinely import foreign workers through the H-1B visa program — have laid off or are planning to lay off nearly 85,000 employees in the U.S. in 2022 and the first quarter of 2023.
At the same time, those same 30 tech corporations imported 34,414 foreign H-1B visa workers to take white-collar jobs in STEM fields. Thirteen of these 30 corporations are outsourcing firms that contract directly with Big Tech companies to funnel foreign workers into jobs.
For years, Breitbart News has chronicled the abuses against white-collar American professionals as a result of the H-1B visa program. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
Take Amazon, for example, which imported nearly 6,400 foreign H-1B visa workers to take American jobs last year — more than any other tech corporation or outsourcing firm in the U.S. Meanwhile, Amazon executives have laid off or plan to lay off more than 27,000 U.S. employees.
Likewise, Google imported 1,562 foreign H-1B visa workers last year while laying off or planning to lay off about 12,000 U.S. employees. Meta Platforms, which includes Facebook and Instagram, imported 1,546 foreign H-1B visa workers for American jobs while laying off and planning to lay off 21,000 U.S. employees.
“Rather than turning to the H-1B program as a last resort when U.S. workers cannot be found, most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer,” EPI researchers Daniel Costa and Ron Hira write:
This is evidenced by government data showing that technology companies continue to hire H-1B workers in large numbers while significantly reducing the sizes of their workforces. [Emphasis added]
Previously, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Breitbart News that major changes are necessary to eliminate corporate America’s abuse of the H-1B visa program.
At the time, OhioHealth announced that 640 American tech and finance employees would be laid off and have their jobs sent to Accenture — a Fortune 500 multinational corporation notorious for importing foreign H-1B visa workers to replace Americans in white-collar jobs.
“Generally speaking, a lot of the H-1B abuse we see is in the interests of the people hiring the [foreign visa] worker, who can undercut the wages of Americans, but is it in the interest of the 700 Ohioans who lost their jobs? Absolutely not,” Vance told Breitbart News.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has similarly told Breitbart News that the federal government ought to be hyper-focused on full employment for Americans before corporations start importing foreign visa workers to fill such open jobs.
“It makes absolutely no sense, at this moment when we have millions of people still out of work, to be bringing in foreign workers to take their jobs,” Cotton said in the 2020 interview. “We need to focus on getting American citizens back into the workforce and back working again.”
Every year, more than half a million American graduates enter the STEM workforce looking for high-paying jobs with good benefits packages. Their chances of landing such a job are cut significantly with the annual inflow of tens of thousands of foreign H-1B visa workers who will compete directly against them in the white-collar labor market.
Nearly all H-1B visa reforms imposed by former President Trump have been reversed by President Joe Biden. Last year, for example, Biden allowed corporations that had been denied foreign H-1B visa workers by the Trump administration to reapply.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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