Free Republic

The Phoenix TSMC plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online. TSMC has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Construction of the plant has been hampered by accidents and misunderstandings. A former supervisor at the site blamed delays on disorganization from management and a lack of knowledge by bosses from Taiwan on adhering to safety codes and regulations in the US. When they started working at the site, all workers went through a...

For over 35 years, the American political system has been unable to make any significant change to U.S. immigration policy. In June 2023, a bipartisan coalition of representatives introduced the Dignity Act, a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This followed a poll showing that four out of five Americans support bipartisan cooperation on immigration that would address labor shortages and inflation. While U.S. politics may continue to prevent an immigration grand bargain, there are many commonsense reforms the government could take to fill gaps in our current workforce. American policymakers need to wake up to a new reality: The country is...

Nearly 70 nationals have filed a lawsuit against the US government for denying them H-1B visas due to fraud committed by their employers, as reported by Bloomberg Law. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied H-1B specialty occupation visas to Indian graduates despite their subsequent employment at legitimate businesses. A lawsuit was filed in the federal district court in Washington state this week. According to the complaint, Indian graduates, employed through a training program for foreign graduates of US colleges and universities, were unfairly punished for their association with those businesses without having a chance to respond. The Indians involved...

India's caste system is among the world's oldest forms of surviving social stratification. The BBC explains its complexities. The system which divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (the Hindi word for religion, but here it means duty) is generally accepted to be more than 3,000 years old. How did caste come about? Manusmriti, widely regarded to be the most important and authoritative book on Hindu law and dating back to at least 1,000 years before Christ was born, "acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society"....

A raft of evidence shows that caste discrimination has been imported from India to the United States. Indians and Indian Americans are often held up as a “model minority” in the United States. Members of this community are more likely to be highly educated and to have health insurance, make more money, work in more senior positions, and have lower rates of poverty than both the average immigrant and the average American. They are well represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the so-called STEM subjects—and more and more of them occupy roles of political and social influence, including Vice President...

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Elon Musk Friday that he favors more immigration into skilled U.S. jobs and that former President Donald Trump made a “poor decision” by exiting the Pacific-region free trade treaty. ....snip.... About 20 minutes into the conversation, Ramaswamy also argued for more migration after Musk called for more migration: I agree with that. I actually fully agree with that. And that’s one of the things where I think the Republican Party needs to define where we actually stand. There is an anti-legal immigration current [mood among voters] … I’m going to be on the debate...

As the joint chamber of Congress waited for Israeli President Herzog to enter, and as members were seated in their respective areas, Kristen Sinema, striking a rather voluptuous pose, was seen chatting with Republican Senator from Utah Mike Lee. From the time she entered until she sat down, she was not seen talking to any Democrat.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of mass immigration – whether of the legal or illegal variety – is that we need the workers. You’ve probably heard claims such as, “We need more workers,” or, “Immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do.” A recent article by American Compass CEO Oren Cass in The Atlantic magazine takes these arguments on, making the case that a labor “shortage” is actually a good thing. Cass’s solution: “If employers are struggling to find workers, they should offer better pay and conditions. If that comes at the expense of some profits, or requires some prices...

The Walt Disney Company has begun a third round of layoffs in which more than 2,500 workers will lose their jobs. The planned cuts will affect most major divisions of the roughly $185 billion company, which was recently split into: entertainment, ESPN and parks and resorts. They are not aimed at a specific section, although parks and resorts will remain largely unaffected, according to Deadline. It comes after Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed the company's plans for three rounds of layoffs back in March as it tries to achieve savings of $5.5 billion. Disney is slashing its workforce by 7,000...

America First Legal has launched a government-wide investigation into Microsoft’s apparent prioritizing hiring H-1B Visa holders over American workers. The legal organization has fired off Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Department of Labor, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice. According to AFL, “the government and the private sector continue to put the American people last to propel their open borders agenda – accountability is long overdue. America First Legal is determined to expose any government involvement in this anti-American hiring scheme.”

Latest job cuts point to ongoing weakness in tech sector.. SAN JOSE — Hundreds more tech and biotech layoffs have rattled the Bay Area job market, cutbacks that hint the sectors are still wobbly and have yet to shift back into hiring mode. IBM, Accenture, Amplitude and Myovant Sciences are among the most recent companies to reveal staffing cutbacks in the Bay Area, according to documents on file with the state’s labor agency. The most recent layoffs produced a combined total job loss of just over 300 positions in the Bay Area. ... All told, starting in July 2022, tech...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is seeking up to $15 billion in tax credits and grants from the federal government to support its Arizona semiconductor plants amid concerns about subsidy criteria, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. TSMC expects to receive $7 billion to $8 billion in tax credits under the CHIPS Act, in addition to $6 billion to $7 billion in grants for its Arizona plants, according to the WSJ, citing people familiar with the matter. TSMC is investing more than $40 billion in building two fabs in north Phoenix, marking one of the largest foreign direct investments in the...

Trade between India and Malaysia is now able to be settled with Indian Rupees, the India Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced in a statement Saturday. This move strikes a blow to the hegemony US dollar. “This initiative by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is aimed at facilitating the growth of global trade and to support the interests of the global trading community in Indian Rupees (INR),” the statement from the MEA reads.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced Monday that the company will be laying off another 9,000 employees, marking the second round of significant layoffs this year. These cuts are in addition to the 18,000 layoffs Jassy announced in January, which had started in November. Jassy said in a memo to employees on Monday that most of the cuts will affect Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s People Experience and Technology Solutions, advertising, and Twitch, which is a video live-streaming service. “For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount,” Jassy wrote in a memo...

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since...

The online job and social site listed the top skills in areas such as IT, as well as engineering, recruiting, sales, and marketing.LinkedIn today released an exhaustive list of skills employers prioritize when recruiting, posting, and hiring for jobs on the company's website.“It's true that topics like layoffs are trending on LinkedIn and conversations around 'recession' are up nearly 900% since last year," the company said in the report. "The rate of global LinkedIn member job change has flatlined for the first time since March 2021. No matter the setback, looming re-org, or change in strategy, learning in-demand skills can...

Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-ESG investment entrepreneur, had hinted that he was contemplating joining the Republican presidential primary fray, so it wasn’t a complete surprise when he announced on Tucker Carlson’s show that he’s decided to run. And why not? Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign showed that Americans were sick of politics as usual, and that particular illness is probably going to be much worse after four years of Biden. The big question, of course, is what Ramaswamy has to offer. I happen to think that he has a lot to offer. Ramaswamy, 37, is a Midwesterner, having been born and raised...

Vivek Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and in a video posted on Tuesday. The 37-year-old billionaire, who has been dubbed the "CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.," founded biotech company Roivant Science in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. That same year, he published Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. He is the son of Indian immigrants.

When she lost her job at Google last month, Jingjing Tan started worrying about her dog, an energetic, 75-pound German shepherd. As a foreign worker living in the U.S. on a temporary work visa, if she couldn’t find a job within 60 days, she feared she might have to return to her home country, China. In big Chinese cities, where tech jobs are, keeping large dogs as pets often isn’t allowed. *** Layoffs have rippled across the tech industry, with more than 257,000 job cuts since last year. *** While there is no reliable way to track how many workers...

Yahoo plans to lay off more than 20% of its total workforce as part of a major restructuring of its ad tech unit, executives told Axios. The cuts will impact more than 50% of Yahoo's ad tech employees — more than 1,600 people. Why it matters: The changes will end Yahoo’s years-long effort to compete directly with Google and Meta for digital advertising dominance. Driving the news: In an interview, Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone stressed that the layoffs are not attributable to financial challenges, but rather, strategic changes to the company's Yahoo for Business advertising unit, which is not profitable....