Posted on 03/10/2017 12:13:45 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Leo Perrero still remembers the humiliation of losing his job.
“All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days,” he was told, later recalling the experience before Congress.
“Later that same day,” he added, “I remember very clearly going to the local church pumpkin sale and having to tell the kids that we could not buy any because my job was going over to a foreign worker.”
Disney replaced Perrero using a little-known and oft overlooked provision of immigration law that allows big tech companies to replace their employees with foreign workers under extremely questionable circumstances.
In an upcoming episode of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” — “H-1B Hell: The Sellout of America’s Best and Brightest Workers” — Malkin delves into how the H-1B worker visa program has been putting people like Leo Perrero and countless others out of work since 1990.
On location at UC San Francisco, where 79 IT workers recently lost their jobs to an outsourcing firm and user of H-1B visa workers, Malkin spoke to some of tech workers laid off by the university.
“I was shocked Monday when I showed up at work and my boss was standing there with a letter,” said Greg Lennon, one such former UCSF employee.
“Every single one of my evaluations for 15 years said ‘meets and exceeds expectations,’ and that was from three different managers,” Lennon said. “I was working between 60 and 70 hours per week.”
Even worse, the employees were told to “dig their own graves” as it were, being forced to train their foreign replacements in exchange for their severance pay.
“It’s kind of insulting,” said one of Lennon’s co-workers – a married father of two – when asked about the situation. “[It’s] a slap in the face.”
Such experiences are, unfortunately, not uncommon. Over the past few years alone, similar stories have emerged elsewhere in the tech sector, most notably from Disney and Microsoft.
“The H-1B program essentially handed the keys to our immigration system to corporations with a lot of influence and with ulterior motives,” Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz tells MMI. “Their motive is to bring in as many cheap workers as possible, which is understandable; you always want to cut costs.” But the unintended consequences are far-reaching, he added.
“Why should IBM or Disney be deciding our future voting population?” Horowitz asks. “That needs to be decided by our general immigration system, not those looking to save $15,000 or $20,000 on their labor costs.”
To learn more about America’s H-1B visa crisis, check out “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” only on CRTV. - See more at:
https://www.crtv.com/michelle-malkin-investigates?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=trial&utm_term=malkin
Where I once worked they made many train their foreign replacements before firing them. One fellow, a wheel-chaired veteran and father of two, as a result, committed suicide.
Why does we constantly hear Media screaming shortage of US qualified workers?
RE: Why does we constantly hear Media screaming shortage of US qualified workers?
They actually mean shortage of US qualified workers who will accept lower pay, but they’re not saying it in a straightforward manner.
I have trained my H1B replacement at least 5 times in my 38 year electronics career ... now happily retired
RE: Where I once worked they made many train their foreign replacements before firing them.
I gather you worked at Disney? because that’s EXACTLY what they did.
Just a few weeks back, the University of California at San Francisco did the same thing too. Nearly 80 American IT workers were let go, but they had to train their replacements before that happened.
RE: I have trained my H1B replacement at least 5 times in my 38 year electronics career
Does that mean you were laid off 5 times in 38 years?
>>Why does we constantly hear Media screaming shortage of US qualified workers?
Because those stories include the exhortation to get a student loan, go to college, get that tech degree, and be in debt for life while the H1Bs replace you.
It serves the Progressive agenda so many ways:
1) Americans need to spend money at Progressive universities to be competitive.
2) Americans don’t have time to slowly accumulate credits as they can pay for it. They need DEBT! And they need it NOW!
3) Americans could be replacing the foreigners, but so sorry, you just don’t have QUITE the RIGHT credentials.
4) America needs foreigners to survive.
When the announcement was made at my last IT employer that the head of personnel was going on disability with recently discovered terminal breast cancer we had a party that evening. Nobody outside of senior management signed the card that circulated or contributed to a gift...
That happened to my son about 10 years ago when he worked at Pegasus reservations company. Then in 2010, the hospital (John C. Lincoln) medical transcription dept. where I worked was shut down and the work was sent to India (courtesy of Dictaphone, Nuance, and Focus Informatics). We were “offered” positions with Nuance but at a 50% pay cut. Now work containing important personal medical information of millions of Americans is being done overseas in a third world country. What could go wrong?
I am in the software industry.
There is a lot of ignorance about H1-Bs. There are a lot of people ignorant about high tech and the labor shortage. They need to learn the facts before advocating policies that would harm our high tech industries.
H1-Bs go mostly to software engineers/developers who have at least a bachelor’s degree, most likely in a engineering major. They do not go to the lower skilled jobs like testing, customer support or IT. These aren’t leaf-blowers they are brining in. They are scarce, incredibly talented people.
There aren’t enough Americans capable of doing those highly skilled jobs. Very few people are capable of programming at the level needed by today’s high tech companies. It’s like baseball: companies need engineers at the major league or at least AAA level. Software is hard and complicated. People who are not qualified are worse than useless — they introduce bugs into your code and make projects much more difficult (or impossible) to accomplish.
Americans who can develop software are making incredible amounts of money. 22-year-old college graduates with CS degrees from the top American Universities are making $100k+. Some in their mid-30s are in the $300k-plus range.
The Labor Department makes companies jump through hoops to make sure the applicants are needed, that they are making market wages and they aren’t putting Americans out of work. They are not low-paid.
I can’t say it strongly enough: There is a huge, huge, gigantic, monstrous shortage of people who are capable of developing software well.
Bringing in the smartest, most talented people from all over the world to help our software companies is a good thing. They allow our companies to build products and technology they otherwise would not be able to do because of the lack of capable people.
By allowing companies to do more, they create more jobs for Americans.
Without H1-Bs we would limit the size of high tech companies and what they could do. They would be less competitive in the world market. China is already becoming more and more competitive in software. They will pass us in five years if we handcuffed our companies.
Do we want many of the smartest people in the industry to work for our companies or do we want them to stay home and compete against us?
I sent an email to Michelle Malkin three years ago suggesting she investigate it and gave her some clues on who to contact.
Looks like she read my email.
HP, Intel, MS, Google and FB are in a lot of trouble.
Me bad.
You were replaced by foreign outsourcing — low-cost foreign workers working abroad, which is a completely different story from talented H1-Bs coming to the United States to work at market prices.
Public education?
Hardware Engineering and validation has been devastated by H1b since ‘98.
I saw people forced to train in people from Costa Rica ONLY because they were cheap.
The manager who was forced by the corporation to set it up was one of the finest people I know.
She eventually was forced out of the company rather than put up with it anymore.
I myself left three years ago rather than put up with the nonsense and games.
Software simply hasn’t been touched ...yet.
Both parties knew. Both did nothing, deliberately, with full knowledge.
Dems, because they want new voters
Repubs, because they want cheap labor.
F both parties.
“They [the H1-B’s] are scarce, incredibly talented people.”
Then why do they have to trained by the soon-to-be-terminated?
Could not disagree with you more. Kill the H1-B and wages will rise. Yes they are good now - so what. They will rise to the point that American workers start pouring in and the market will stabilize.
I own a software company and I do hire overseas workers (about half my staff) in order to compete. I don’t hire H1-B.
I was hiring this last week and received resumes and talked with workers in a DC company that are being replaced by H1B. And, just like the article, are being forced to train their replacements in order to get their severance packages. Sickening.
The H1-B needs to die immediately and wages need to rise to their real levels. I’m sorry but I see a real problem when some mid-level manager gets $250k a year to sit on his ass and drink coffee but we think $100k is too much for a coder and want to depress their wages by importing cheap labor.
In addition to the H1-B dying, I would like to see a 50% tariff on outsourcing overseas. Yes, I would have to pay more. But so would all of my domestic competitors so it’s all the same to me. Overseas competitors tend to be uniformly incompetent and come with serious security risks so they don’t worry me.
Let the market speak. Let labor get paid what they should get paid. No artificial government interference at any part of the scale. Let’s MAGA.
One ought to visit Houston and see how many engineers are out of work because of the depressed oil industry.
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