Tesla has replaced some of its US employees who were let go as part of a big wave of layoffs earlier this year with foreign workers using H-1B visas, which CEO Elon Musk is now campaigning to increase.
Over the last week, Elon Musk has been promoting the increase of H-1B visas, which are used to bring foreign workers into the US for “specialty occupations.”
Qualified foreign workers need to be sponsored by a company to get the visa, which lasts three years, extendable to six years, after which the holder needs to reapply.
The visa holder must maintain employment at the visa sponsor to retain the work visa. The worker would have to leave the country if the employment ends for whatever reason. This has led to some criticism as it gives tremendous power to the employer and can lead to a modern version of indentured servitude.
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[Edit typo.]
A friendly reminder to everybody here that the problem with this is not that “H-1B immigrants have the job instead,” but that “H-1B immigrants can be easily abused via deportation threats.”
It’s an easy thing to forget when you’ve got headlines like this one that subtly phrase this scenario (intentionally or not) as though it’s the “immigrants work here now” part that’s the problem. Were it that H-1B workers were properly protected, and citizens were given sufficient social safety nets and welfare programs to thrive despite this, there’d be no issue whatsoever.
Yeah, I didn’t want to edit the title, but I post again an important paragraph:
I remember at an old job that I noticed everyone leaving was a citizen and the only people sticking it out were on visas.
Both can be problems, if the goal of hiring H1B is to depress wages.
That’s the fault of the employer, not immigrants. Immigrants having jobs is never the issue.
When companies lay off US citizens then turn around and hire foreigners as replacements, the original employees are understandably upset. It’s true that it is the company’s fault, but it is also true that an H1B visa holder is working a job that should be occupied by a domestic worker.
Someone being fired and replaced by someone else is not inherently wrong, and that doesn’t change at all whether they’re an immigrant or not. What you seem to be complaining about is the practice of companies doing so specifically so that they can get a cheaper worker who can be abused more, or doing so when the original employee had done nothing wrong; however, phrasing this as “an H1B visa holder is working a job that should be occupied by a domestic worker” is the absolute wrong way to go about it, because this makes it sound as though an immigrant having a job is fundamentally less worthwhile than a citizen having it.
This is a government policy failure, allowing misuse of the H1B program. Be angry at the company and the government, but don’t blame the worker who is inherently in a worse position than the domestic worker, both in and out of work, for taking the job.
I never said we should blame the worker.