Prominent U.S. tech companies obtained more H-1B visas in 2017 than in 2016, according to a new study by the National Foundation for American Policy using fresh data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. At the same time, several of the largest India-based companies saw a decrease in approved petitions for the second year in a row. From 2016-2017, increase in H1-B petitions Amazon up 76% to 2,515 Facebook up 53% Google up 31% Microsoft up 29% to 1,479 Intel up 19% Apple up 7% Foreign students: International students account for 81% of the full-time graduate students at U.S. universities in electrical engineering and 79% in computer science, per the report. That could be a contributing factor to the high number of H-1Bs used by U.S. tech companies.
Good gosh those are awful numbers for the USA. I was gonna push for a moratorium on work visas. But with only 20 percent of the graduates being American, I don't know now.
I'm sure that foreign workers are willing to work for less than Americans are as well. Lower wage expectations would certainly be attractive to profit-hungry, err I'm sorry, growth hungry major corporations.
Well in California, where a lot of those tech jobs are located, about 1 out 3 students in state colleges are foreign students, typically Asian, but many from India also. That's a high number when you think about it.
The US Justice Department is suing Facebook, claiming that Facebook discriminated against Americans by preferring to hire high skill immigrants. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...against-u-s-workers/vi-BB1bBM5h?ocid=msedgntp https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...eging-discrimination-against-american-workers A lawsuit filed Thursday by the Justice Department accuses Facebook of refusing to recruit or consider U.S workers for some 2,600 positions from January 2018 to September 2019, instead reserving those jobs for H-1B temporary work visa holders that the company sponsored for permanent residency, often known as a green card. Federal law requires companies to demonstrate that there are no qualified U.S. workers for a position before it offers the job to a foreign worker on a temporary visa who the company can then sponsor for an employment-based green card. DOJ alleges in its lawsuit that Facebook reserved those thousands of jobs for foreign workers it sponsored for green cards through a federal immigration process dubbed PERM. Facebook did not advertise the positions on its careers website, required applicants to apply by mail and refused to consider U.S. workers for the roles, the Justice Department alleges. Why would a tech company want high skilled immigrants rather than trying to hire high skilled Americans? Because the company knows it can pay someone from India or China much less, and the company can work them harder too and they won't complain. The company has much more leverage over them, because these foreign workers know if they are fired they will be required to go back to their own country, and the best jobs they can get won't even pay half as much.
