Farah Stockman writes for the New York Times:
…for more than a decade, Americans working in the tech industry have been systematically laid off and replaced by cheaper H-1B visa holders…
Prominent companies were jettisoning their locally hired I.T. departments and outsourcing those jobs…
When Americans realize they can’t make a living as software engineers, they leave the industry. The H-1B program worsens the very shortages it was supposed to address.
Most H-1B visa holders are lower-paid labor, not top talent. In May, Musk laid off more than 14,000 Tesla workers, including many H-1B visa holders. Reddit threads filled with laments by workers who had moved to the United States from India only to be let go with no warning. They were desperate to remain in the country, but because H-1B visas are owned by the employer, they had few options for doing so.
That’s why these workers stay compliant and cheap: They can’t leave the companies that control the visas. If they were really top talent, they should be getting green cards, not enduring six years of underpaid servitude.
“How do they get away with mass layoffs — then claim shortages?” Ron Hira, a Howard University professor who has written about this issue for two decades, asked me.
Confronted on X with evidence of relatively low pay for H-1B positions, Musk admitted what many of us already knew: The “program is broken and needs major reform.”
