Good day all. For decades, technology companies have been using cheap H1B visa holders to replace higher paid Americans. I’ve read estimates that as many as 1 million H1B holders are in the United States. This is a million Americans who aren’t employed by the likes of Microsoft.
People in the tech field have been complaining, and in some cases suing companies over their use of cheap H1b wage slaves. They’ve also complained to their representatives, all to n effect…Until now. Vice President Vance has announced that the Trump administration is suspending H1B visas for Microsoft and other companies. Here are the details from Fox Business News:
Vice President JD Vance and Labor Department officials announced Thursday that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and others from a key employment-based green-card program, accusing major tech firms and outsourcing companies of abusing the visa system at the expense of American workers.
“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft,” Vance said at a news conference on H-1B and J-1 visa fraud, noting the administration was targeting companies that he accused of using foreign workers to undercut U.S. wages and replace American employees.
Vice President Vance tee’d off on Microsoft, however, it isn’t just Microsoft that has been abusing the H1B system.
Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards, calling it a “scandalous system.”
“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with 1½ foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.
One big difference between H1B’s and those who are permanent resident aliens is the ability to change jobs. Green Card holders can quit and go to another, better paying job where an H1B visa holder is chained to the job he or she is working at.
Vance said the administration had decided to suspend Microsoft’s access to the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, which allows employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency.
“Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
I got curious so I looked up the CEO of Microsoft. This is Satya Nadella and he is a naturalized citizen from India. He came here in an F1 student Visa and then switched to an H1B. He eventually applied for and received permanent resident status. Eventually, although I can’t find when, he became a United States Citizen.
The Department of Labor was also suspending Adobe from the program, along with several major IT outsourcing firms – Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini among them – according to Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, citing active federal investigations.
“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” he said. “Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications.
“That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers. Our historic action is the first critical step to stop the fraud and the abuse, and ensure that these programs never come at the expense of the American worker,” he said. “Under President Trump’s leadership and thanks to Vice President Vance and this task force, we are ending the fraud that has fueled reliance on foreign labor.”
Most of those companies are India based recruiting firms. There has been a long history of reports that they have been gaming the system. Some of the reports indicated that they were recommending people who not only didn’t have the qualifications required by the employer, (American), they were incompetent. What they were, was cheap. These people would be paid significantly less than Americans were and most of the consulting fees paid by the employer went into the Indian outsourcing companies.
It wasn’t just the outsourcing companies and the American companies that were being hit with this. The Trump administration is also investigating what is going on with the J-1 visas requested by Universities.
Vance announced investigations into alleged J-1 visa abuse at several universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State and MIT.
“I am announcing a historic investigation into the J-1 visa fraud involving nine major American universities,” Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said. “Subpoenas have been served, investigations are underway, and nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building.”
“Improperly using J-1 visa classifications to avoid employment obligations, exploit taxpayer-funded programs and undermine American workers will not be tolerated,” he added.
I’m not at all surprised that most of the Ivy league schools are investigated, along with powerhouses like MIT and Caltech. There are a lot of other things these schools have been caught doing. Playing games with the J-1 visas would be just one more in a long list of abuses, including blatant racism in their selection process for student applications.
Vance denounced what he called the “insult” of visa fraud by America’s companies.
“This is a fundamental insult to the American worker and to the American way of life,” Vance said. “We cannot allow visa programs that were designed to ensure that American corporations had access to the best and the brightest, to use them to undercut the wages of American workers.”
Part of this is due to the MBA’s running businesses. These people are always looking at cutting costs and increasing profits. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when they don’t look at things like the long term, and ignore things like the law. Someone who goes for an MBA degree after working for a few years is looking at getting a better handle on management. Those who just got one as the next step after their bachelors are the ones who tend to make a mess of things. There is a reason that an MBA is also known as a “Masters of Business Annihilation.”
Vance urged Congress to reform the program for its loopholes to abuse.
“I, again, would encourage Congress to reform this program. It is very clear that it’s not working the way that it should, but we have tools in the administration to make this program work better for the American people. A lot more we could do if Congress was willing to play ball,” he continued. “And again, we extend an invitation to both Democrats and Republicans. If you want the H-1B visa program to stop being used to defraud the American taxpayer and to undercut the wages of American workers, get to work, and we will help you, but we’re going to do everything that we can in the interim to ensure the program works as it was designed for.”
Yeah, good luck with that. For the GOP, most are bought and paid for by the Chamber of Commerce. For the Democrats, they’re owned by the Universities and leadership of a lot of the Unions.
When asked about targeting companies, Vance was detailed in saying it was intended to change companies’ behavior and not punish them. But Attorney General Todd Blanche did warn there could be criminal cases brought against companies or individuals, too, that have been found to have broken U.S. law.
That will be the only way to stop this abuse. Make it expensive for companies, and not by things like fines and settlements. CEO’s and Human Resources managers need to be criminally charged, tried and sent to prison. Only then will the rest get the message that America First means hire Americans first, then Legal Resident Aliens. H1B’s should be very low on the totem pole of potential hires.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
