(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) As Big Tech continues to lay off American workers, citing economic downturns, the industry has simultaneously been importing thousands of foreigners into the country to supply cheaper labor, Breitbart reported.
According to the initial report from the Economic Policy Institute, 30 large tech companies have hired 34,414 skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas in the same time that they have fired—or had planned to ax—nearly 85,000 employees in the U.S. in 2022 and the first quarter of 2023.
Amazon, for example, hired 6,400 H-1B workers last year alone. Meanwhile, executives plan to lay off 27,000 domestic workers.
Google hired over 1,500 H-1B visa workers last year and is in the midst of a 12,000 domestic employee layoff.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta came in with similar numbers, hiring another 1,500 foreigners while firing over 21,000 United States workers.
They were joined by Microsoft, which has hired approximately 1,000 foreigners while planning to fire 10,000 Americans.
EPI researchers Daniel Costa and Ron Hira suggested that all signs indicate that tech bosses were turning to foreigners with higher profits in mind, not out of necessity.
“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,” they wrote.
However, according to Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, massive changes will be needed to overhaul America’s H-1B visa problem.
“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 said.
Vance’s claim was supported previously by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who said in 2020 that securing American citizenship rights is the first step to undermining the corporate attack on American labor.
“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,” he noted. “We need to focus on getting American citizens back into the workforce and back working again.”
