Big Tech: U.S. Success Depends on Corporations Importing H-1B Workers

Big Tech executives say the United States’ success “depends” on corporations’ ability to import foreign workers, specifically those on the H-1B visa, to take white-collar American jobs.

In interviews with Axios, spokespersons for Google and Facebook — the billion-dollar tech conglomerates — said the U.S. must allow corporations to import foreign H-1B visa workers even as nearly 30 million Americans are jobless or underemployed.

Axios reports:

“America’s continued success depends on companies having access to the best talent from around the world. Particularly now, we need that talent to help contribute to America’s economic recovery,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda told Axios. [Emphasis added] “Highly skilled visa holders play a critical role in driving innovation — at Facebook and at organizations across the country — and that’s something we should encourage, not restrict,” a Facebook spokesperson told Axios. [Emphasis added]

The statements come as President Donald Trump’s administration has successfully slowed the rate at which tech corporations are importing foreign H-1B visa workers instead of hiring Americans for scarce white-collar jobs.

Uber, the ride-sharing company with ties to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), has had their denial rate increase from two percent in 2015 to 25 percent. Likewise, IBM’s denial rate has increased to 19 percent with Amazon and Google have each seen their denial rates jump to 15 percent this year.

Trump has slowed the overall total of foreign H-1B visa workers to the U.S., despite guidance from the State Department attempting to gut his reduction to overall immigration. In January, for example, more than 61,000 foreign nationals and their families secured white-collar visas. In July, that number fell to fewer than 2,300.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whom Big Tech CEOs have joined in a lawsuit to import foreign workers amid mass unemployment, told Axios‘ Stef Kight that importing foreign H-1B visa workers is necessary to “start new operations.”

“It’s not so much just bringing the talent into the country,” the Chamber’s Jon Baselice said. “It’s having the talent come here to help start new operations.”

The Department of Labor is expected to soon finalize guidance to prevent employers from importing foreign H-1B visa workers at an outsourcing firm to displace American workers at another company, as is often the practice.

There are about 650,000 H-1B visa 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. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.

Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.