Exposing Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret

No group has howled louder about President Trump's executive order on refugee vetting than the elitist eggheads in Silicon Valley.  Their uproar has earned them lavish media praise as compassionate humanitarians. But there is nothing altruistic about their support for open borders.

Profits not patriotism motivates these honchos of high-tech who are exploiting the nation's immigration system to hire thousands of foreign workers to replace higher-paid Americans who toil in the bowels of their cash-flush firms.  

These businesses take advantage of a little known program, called H-1B Visa.  Under this scheme, American firms can temporarily employ foreign nationals in select occupations for three years with the ability to extend the period to six years.  After that, workers return to their native country.

Current immigration law requires these foreign H-1B visa employees to hold a bachelor's degree or higher from an accredited university.  In addition, they must be hired for critical occupations in fields such as mathematics, biotechnology, science and computer engineering, to name a few.

In 2014 and 2015, the government issued 591,174 visas to foreign workers to immigrate to the United States. More than 60 percent of the individuals admitted under the visa program were computer programmers or were recruited in related fields.

The statistics cited above were culled from reports compiled by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security.  Although cumulative data is nonexistent, there are estimated 800,000 H-1B visa holders working in the country on any given day.

Among the top 100 companies sponsoring H-1B visa immigrants, Americans will discover the names of some of the country's premier firms, including Apple, Amazon, Intel, Qualcomm Technologies, IBM, Google, Microsoft and scores of Silicon Valley start-ups and stars.

These firms justify their hiring of foreign workers by claiming there aren't enough American workers with degrees in science, technology, math and engineering.  That's not true.  For instance, American colleges graduate twice as many students with degrees in those fields than there are available jobs.

In fact, a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, found more than one third of recent computer science graduates are not working in their chosen field because they are unable to find jobs. Yet Silicon Valley complains they cannot find enough highly-specialized workers.

The Department of Labor has the responsibility for ensuring these firms do not displace American employees with lower-paid foreign workers. Under Mr. Obama, the agency failed to address documented cases of abuse after wizards of high-tech pored millions of dollars into his campaign.

In one instance, Southern California Edison laid off about 400 information technology employees and replaced them with foreign workers from India with H-1B visas in 2015. The displaced workers' annual pay averaged $110,000, while the foreigners' compensation averaged $75,000.

Many other companies, including Disney, New York Life, Toys R Us and Eversource Energy, have used the same sleazy strategy.  More often than not, these firms not only offer lower wages to the H-1B workers, but they dole out reduced benefit packages.

American workers are beginning to fight back.  Fourteen former employees at Abbott Laboratories, a health care conglomerate, filed a federal suit last year claiming they were sent packing so their jobs could be appropriated by foreign workers with H-1B visas.

There would be more legal battles but often displaced workers are strong-armed by their former employers to sign an agreement not to file suit as a condition for receiving their severance pay.

Some firms are using subterfuge to dodge public criticism over hiring foreigners. For example, American companies outsource the hiring of foreign workers to Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, both India based companies with satellite offices in the United States.

Not surprisingly,  Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services are the top two H-1B employers in America. They recruit lower-paid professionals from India and other countries, obtain H-1B visas for the workers, then outsource the newly arrived foreigners to American firms.

This insidious practice, which robs Americans of jobs, needs to be halted immediately.  President Trump has promised to deal with the issue soon through executive action.  Given its importance to American workers, the president's initiative deserves bi-partisan support.

But, of course, it will never happen.  Silicon Valley and the other corporate abusers of the visa program are big donors to Democrats, who will obstruct any changes in the current scheme. American workers will be the big losers if they succeed in maintaining the status quo.