Tag: H-1B

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor announced an 18-month delay in the effective date of the final rule, “Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States,” mostly foreign nationals working on employment-based visas.

The final rule, originally published in January 2021, will now become effective on November 14, 2022. The greater likelihood, however, is that the rule will be delayed again or totally ignored. DOL’s official explanation is that the one-and-a-half-year pushback will provide the department time to evaluate the legality and policy consequences of the Trump administration’s order and also allow time to review public feedback in response to the DOL’s Request for Information published on April 2, 2021, in the Federal Register.

Continue reading “Biden’s DOL Guts H-1B Reform Rule; Hurts U.S. Tech Workers, Recent College Grads”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

Never has Big Tech pushed harder for cheap labor for the rich and powerful than it’s done in the last few weeks. The latest available data show that, from 2005 to 2018, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft laid out an aggregate $582 million to protect their collective interests on a range of topics that include protecting the inflow of employment-based visas, specifically the H-1B.

Continue reading “Trump Immigration Order Sends Big Tech into Advocacy Overdrive”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

Finally! After nearly three decades of pleading to deaf Republican and Democratic congresses for a fair shake, American workers, especially those in the tech sector who have been relentlessly displaced by workers imported from other countries, can celebrate. The biggest winners are U.S. tech workers who have been, because of ruthless corporate greed and a donor-dependent Congress, persistently displaced by less talented foreign-born H-1B visa employees.

Continue reading “Trump Acts to Defend American Workers”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

Congress, immigration advocacy groups and immigration lawyers are urging the Trump administration to increase the number of foreign-born doctors to alleviate the alleged medical responders’ shortage during the coronavirus pandemic. Minnesota Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, along with colleagues in the House and Senate, wrote to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requesting that the agency resume premium processing for international medical school graduates (non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates) who are seeking employment-based H-1B and J-1 visas. On March 20, USCIS announced that because of COVID-19, it would suspend premium processing.

Continue reading “Congress Keeps U.S. Doctors Sidelined while Championing International Doctors”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

The Trump administration has an historic opportunity to find out, once and forever, if Silicon Valley employers are truly dependent on imported foreign labor, primarily the H-1B visa.

Continue reading “Trump’s Golden Opportunity to Defend American Workers”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

In a story that has become all too familiar, AT&T announced that it will be laying off its U.S. tech workers. Many of the displaced Americans have been employed for decades. They will struggle to find comparable jobs and may not even find employment. AT&T will replace these American workers with foreign nationals.

To add insult to the painful injury of being fired during the Christmas season, the outgoing Americans will have to train their H-1B replacements, and aren’t being offered severance pay. Corporations call the forced training process “knowledge transfer.” But the reality is that if the foreign nationals were as skilled as their employers and advocates claim, they wouldn’t need training. The overseas workers have, at best, ordinary skills.

Continue reading “Unhappy New Year for AT&T’s Displaced U.S. Tech Workers; Cowardly Congress Refuses to Protect Americans”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

The Department of Homeland Security’s recently released Unified Agenda gives hope to U.S. tech workers that major, long overdue changes may be coming soon.

New DHS guidelines would provide relief to American tech specialists from the decades-long onslaught of overseas H-1B visa holders, L-1 visa international transfers and foreign-born Optional Practical Training (OPT) graduates with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees. The H-1B, L-1 and OPT are visas that have displaced American workers or blocked them from employment consideration. The visas are popular vehicles for U.S. corporations and Indian IT services companies to add personnel and, at the expense of American workers, reduce their overhead.

Continue reading “Proposed DHS Revisions to H-1B Offer Ray of Hope to U.S. Tech Workers”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

White House insiders report that Stephen Miller, President Trump’s senior advisor and go-to immigration guy, is no longer the point man. Instead, going forward, the president will rely on his immigration know-nothing son-in-law Jared Kushner. Slight correction: Kushner isn’t quite a complete immigration dunce. He’s savvy enough to realize that some types of immigration can work to his financial benefit, as he demonstrated during an overseas EB-5 sales promotion his company organized two years ago.

Continue reading “Signs of Hope: H-1B Denials, ‘Public Charge’ Rejections Up”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

The H-1B visa that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations typically is associated with tech industry use. But the visa can have more far-reaching applications as recent Capitol Hill actions showed. With the H-1B visas of 25 Baltimore teachers expiring, five Democratic members from the Maryland congressional delegation began to push for extensions.

The teachers’ H-1B history and the advocacy on their behalf to have them remain in the U.S. are familiar. They came to the U.S. years ago, 23 from the Philippines and two from Jamaica, as part of an effort to fill alleged job shortages in teaching slots for math, science and special education. According to a letter the Maryland teachers sent to then-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the teachers have been in the U.S. for between eight and 12 years, are dedicated and have now built lives in the U.S.

Continue reading “H-1B Displaces U.S. Teachers, Drives Down Wages”

You will find more infographics at Statista

Continue reading “The U.S. Metros With The Most H-1B Visa Approvals”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

With April 3 the Opening Day, so to speak, for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to accept fiscal year 2018 H-1B visa petitions, how this affects displaced and unemployed American tech workers is a timely subject.

Congress established a 65,000 H-1B visa cap per fiscal year; an advanced degree cap exemption will go to an additional 20,000 beneficiaries who have earned a U.S. master’s degree or higher. The harsh reality: 85,000 jobs, including tech positions, will go to foreign nationals while Americans will either lose the job they hold or will be denied an opportunity to be seriously considered for employment.

Continue reading “H-1B Visa Opening Day Arrives – 85,000 Tech Job Giveaway as Americans Watch from the Sidelines”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

In a campaign that strikes at the heart of Silicon Valley hiring practices, Congress is being urged to fix the H-1B visa program, a major source of U.S. tech worker displacement since 1990. Now in its second week, the campaign features posters in BART trains and stations with a message for tech and other employers to hire U.S. tech workers.

Unambiguous messaging – “Your companies think you are expensive, undeserving & expendable. Congress, fix H-1B law so companies must seek & hire U.S. workers!” – ignited a Facebook firestorm with predictable extremist racism and xenophobia allegations. In today’s landscape, it’s easier to yell “fire” in a theater than to engage in intelligent, fact-based discussion. Comments posted on the Mercury News which first reported on the campaign, and incoming email from American tech professionals both employed and unemployed, were overwhelmingly positive, however.

Continue reading “Bay Area Campaign Targets H-1B Visas, Asks Congress to Fix on Americans’ Behalf”

Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi

Since Congress created the H-1B in 1990, IT services companies have had things go mostly their way. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics show that the federal government has issued about 1.8 million visas through 2017 to overseas workers that displace or block employment opportunities to experienced, skilled Americans. H-1B visas are valid for three years, are routinely renewed for an additional three years, and routinely lead to citizenship.

Continue reading “Fearing H-1B Tightening, Tech Giants Ramp Up Lobbying”