Betrayed American Workers Expose Dark Underbelly Of H-1B Visa Scheme

They were promised lucrative and stable careers if they “learned to code” and earned a degree in software engineering.

Instead, many Americans in the tech industry have been left disillusioned as they face mass layoffs and chronic unemployment — a crisis they say stems from an addiction to cheap foreign labor pipelines that are made accessible through programs like H-1B, and are touted by companies as a way to hire the “best and brightest.”

“At this point, I’m doing something else,” Jonathan, a cybersecurity professional who is leaving the industry entirely out of frustration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “My career is basically dead in the water because of these problems.”

Jonathan lost his job in the industry in November 2024 and in the months since, he’s submitted well over 200 applications for tech-related positions in the Seattle area, but received a grand total of zero offers — despite five years of experience and purportedly demonstrating high competency in every interview assessment thrown his way.

He wished to be identified only by his first name out of fear of retribution from past and potential employers, as did most of the seven tech employees who spoke with the DCNF.

Controversy surrounding the H-1B program, which very publicly split President Donald Trump’s inner circle shortly before he began his second term, has once again shot onto the national scene as the White House gives mixed signals on the program’s benefits. The issue has proven divisive for the Republican leader, who was elected to office on a pro-worker platform, but also has powerful allies in the tech world.

When reached for comment, the White House referred to recent statements made by press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“The president does not support American workers being replaced,” Leavitt told a group of reporters earlier in November. “The president has a very nuanced, common-sense opinion on this issue … but ultimately [he] wants to see American workers in those jobs… There’s been a lot of misunderstanding of the president’s position.”

‘Disillusioned’ Public data suggests that many American engineers are being passed over for foreign workers.

Throughout 2025, major technology companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Intel underwent layoffs — continuing what has been a years-long trend in the industry. The workers interviewed by the DCNF were not employed at these specific tech companies.

Roughly 428,000 tech workers lost their job between 2022 and 2023, and a total of 384 tech companies handed pink slips to roughly 124,000 workers in 2024, according to the Institute for Sound Public Policy (ISPP).

While H-1Bs have an outsized influence on the tech world, workers across all major industries are impacted by imported foreign labor.

The flow of H-1B workers into the U.S. has largely kept apace despite these mass layoffs, with the ISPP finding that the number of H-1B visa workers has grown 80% since the Great Recession low in 2011. Experts estimate that nearly 660,000 H-1B workers were living in the U.S. in October 2024.

Established by Congress in 1990, the H-1B program was originally intended to utilize “highly specialized” foreign labor, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Although it’s a nonimmigrant visa, H-1B holders can eventually become eligible to apply for legal permanent residence, allowing them to stay in the country indefinitely.

The tech industry dominates the use of H-1Bs, with tech companies accounting for nearly 70% of H-1B petitions annually, according to Nation Connections, a site dedicated to helping individuals navigate immigration laws in different countries.

Other American-born tech workers have shared similar experiences to Jonathan’s, and have stayed silent due to fear of retaliation.

“I do feel kind of disillusioned with the industry,” said Riley, who graduated with a software engineering degree in 2021. “Software engineers have a higher unemployment rate right now than art history majors.”

Art history majors have a 3% unemployment rate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which compiled data released in February. Computer engineering majors, on the other hand, currently suffer from a 7.5% unemployment rate.

Riley said he noticed a monumental shift in the hiring practices of an Austin-based company he worked at for several years. He claims the company — which had faced consistent complaints from engineers about pay — increasingly staffed its engineering departments with employees from South America and eventually established an office in Colombia to better utilize the continent’s workforce.

“I believe that that was done in order to, you know, reduce their labor costs so that they could get engineers without negotiating with [the American-born engineers] or caving to their demands,” Riley said.

Jonathan described a similar situation after the California-based company he worked for introduced an India development center. Roughly six months after the center was launched, he said the company stopped hiring outside of India altogether. About a year after he left, Jonathan’s former coworker informed him that around half of the company’s security personnel was let go.

“You’re going to lose advancement opportunities, you’re going to have HR problems and you’re going to be not a team player if you don’t advocate with open arms the idea of an Indian development center being opened up to your company or a billion H-1Bs flooding the market,” Jonathan said about the situation he was facing and the continued pressure to not speak out.

‘We’re All In The Process Of Being Replaced’ India stands far above any other nation as the top source of foreign labor, making up 72% of all H-1B recipients between October 2022 and September 2023, per a March 2024 report from the Department of Homeland Security.

“We’re all in the process of being replaced,” John, who worked for an insurance company in Connecticut, told the DCNF.

John said there were around 350 IT employees — all purportedly American — at his company when he first began in 2006. Throughout his decade at the company, he claims they were all steadily booted out in favor of foreign workers.

“Most of the time they had them train their Indian replacements before they left as a condition of receiving their severance,” he told the DCNF. “So what I saw over a period of time was a whole bunch of lives being destroyed.”

“A lot of the younger kids can’t find employment,” John said of the industry. “They spent a whole bunch of money learning all of this stuff — computer programs, cloud platforms, this that the other thing — but they can’t find work.”

The tech employees who spoke to the DCNF are struggling to find work in the U.S. at a time when college debt has skyrocketed to historical highs. Roughly 44 million Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion in student debt, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Engineering degrees in general are consistently ranked as one of the costliest to earn.

Like his coworkers before him, John was ultimately “replaced” and handed a severance agreement that forbids him from discussing the matter publicly.

“Coming home to western Washington from Alaska, I assumed that finding a better-paying job would be no issue — we are home to some of the nation’s largest tech companies,” Luke Hawthorne told the DCNF. “I spent nearly a year over 2022 and 2023 searching for my current job, a job which pays me about the same as I was making before.”

While Hawthorne still considers himself lucky to be employed, he said his current salary “doesn’t even approach” the threshold it takes to afford a home in his area of Washington State. His home state’s software developer workforce grew by more than 16% through H-1B certifications over just a 9-month period, with 83% of these positions approved at or below Washington State’s median wage, according to public data he analyzed and shared with the DCNF.

“The ‘best and brightest’ argument simply doesn’t square with how the program is being used,” Hawthorne said. “Another important aspect of it is that you aren’t competing just with the new arrivals, but with all of the tech workers who have been replaced — I have friends with talent and experience who have been out of work for years.”

Many of the tech workers who spoke to the DCNF have since become involved with U.S. Tech Workers, an advocacy group that highlights the plight of American employees negatively affected by the H-1B program and pushes Washington, D.C., for change.

Trump, who has implemented some of the most hawkish immigration policies since returning to office, has appeared to give mixed signals on the issue as major players within his own inner circle disagree over reform.

The president’s coalition appeared fragmented in the weeks leading up to his second presidential inauguration, with business magnate Elon Musk touting H-1Bs in December 2024 and Vivek Ramaswamy suggesting that the U.S. needs foreign talent because American culture “venerated mediocrity over excellence.” Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former a top Trump ally who is resigning from Congress, said in November she would introduce legislation completely phasing out the H-1B program, accusing tech companies of abusing the system at the expense of Americans.

Trump initially appeared to side with the pro-H-1B faction, declaring in December 2024 that he was “a believer” in the visa program. In what appeared to be a major shift into the pro-American worker camp, Trump in September signed a proclamation slapping a $100,000 fee on all new H-1B applications, but opponents of the program have criticized the fee’s limitations and workarounds. Earlier in November, Trump once again publicly touted the need for H-1Bs to import foreign workers.

As Washington, D.C., continues to debate the value of H-1Bs, American tech workers say they’ve been left out to dry.

“I graduated college seven years ago and I remember in high school them telling us, ‘learn to code and you’ll have a good job,'” Joseph Ibrahim, an unemployed tech worker based in Florida, told the DCNF. “Well, it turns out they outsource the coding jobs also, not just the manufacturing jobs.”

Ibrahim got a degree in information systems, business analytics and information systems, but has been struggling to find work since April. Unlike many of the tech workers who spoke to the DCNF, he had no problem being identified by his full name.

“What are they gonna do?” Ibrahim asked. “They’re already not hiring me.”

“You know, if I went into college and on the pamphlet, there were like, ‘pros and cons of studying something in computer science: you may have to train your replacement at some point in your career,’ I would have never studied this,” he said.

I’ve been in hi tech since 1988 and watched companies come and go. The constant drive for profit drives the remaining players to reach to cost cutting and offshoring has been their alleged solution for about 30 years and it has mixed results.
As far as going to school for coding, my oldest son who is now 35 was asked if he wanted “to go into computers because thats what your dad does?”
He replied that, no, he didn’t need to do that because if he had a computer question, he’d ask his dad - he wanted to learn to be an electrician.
He said his quidance counselor nearly fainted when he said that, but he had seen many of my friends who were programmers lose their jobs because of offshoring and he didn’t want to live that life too.

supposedly-American engineering/tech firms hiring (cheaper and obedient) foreign workers (or just exporting the work to Communist China and other Asian paradises)

has been a problem for DECADES.

Irwin Feerst (Long Island, New York) tried to repair the H1B-type damage to American workers. In the 1960-70’s. He ran for president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) a trade organization long-run, dominated by managers of several large “American” corporations. He wanted IEEE to repeal or reform the foreign labor problem. He came within a relative handful of votes to winning but the Powers that Be got their act together and shut the door on him.

He went to WashingtonDC seeking amendment of the laws but got nowhere (there’s no way an individual engineer or techie can outbid the large corporations when it comes to “lobbying” Congress — that takes some real MONEY $$$$$)

What is fascinating is just how thoroughly his life’s work, indeed his very name, has been expurgated (erased) from history (especially here on the internet). Run a few search engines and see if you can find this engineer and what he did, trying to work “within the system” for its reform —

didn’t work. draw your own conclusions, lessons?

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Eric Blair (”George Orwell”), in his dystopic but alas, very prophetic novel “1984” (which he wrote in 1946-1949 so the “writing has been on the wall” for quite some time already)

Things are changing radically in the software development areas where the H1B visa holders have displaced American developers

Software development used to be a very labor intensive process which drove the desire for low cost, lower skill Indian labor

New AI assisted coding is amazing

Using these tools I duplicated what was once a multi year PhD thesis analysis code developed by a really top notch researcher from scratch in less than a week.

The world is changing at warp speed and the work that used to be done by low functioning Indian H1B drones is rapidly being supplanted by modern software design tools and AI based automation

I have no idea where all this is going but it is going there fast

I have a pretty good job as a system administrator for a county agency who tried and hasn’t given up hope of some kind of cybersecurity position.

Along with some formal schooling, I acquired some relevant certifications such as Security +, Net+, CompTIA CYSA, Cisco CyberOps, and project plus. I have others outside security.

I’m looking to take CASP soon then maybe Pentest plus.

It took a while but I have a system worked out that gotten me through many certification exams. Tons of study and test simulations mostly.

“elected to office on a pro-worker platform”

Trump was elected by a coalition that does not agree on every issue.

Our experience is that with H1b 50% of IT is immigrants, 50% is US citizens.
The alternative is outsourcing where 100% of IT is non-Americans. Those who think there is a 3d alternative are delusional.

That said, the H1b and job market in general does have problems.
1) That many immigrants can work (illegally) under 1 visa is a problem.
2) That many immigrants work as a sub-contractor of a sub-contractor is a problem. Nobody is accountable for anything.
3) That the recruiter role has become dominated by those who cannot speak or understand American version of the English language is a BIG problem.
4) That many H1b are not qualified to be IT workers is a BIG BIG BIG problem. A problem we too often ignore. For example, in all the debate over 2020 GA elections how often is it mentioned the role of Indians in India not only lacking an understanding of US law and custom...but also lacking basic IT skills when the code US/GA election software?

5)Those in the Trump coalition who see a role for some immigrants need to address the real problems and fix the problems.

"Vivek Ramaswamy suggesting that the U.S. needs foreign talent because American culture “venerated mediocrity over excellence"

That is a big load of malarkey... When they started letting the red-dots force the Americans out, is when the "mediocrity over excellence" came in to play.
The red-dots' "training and education" is run by diploma mills in India to get rid of their own and send them here.
We're infected so bad with them, that it may be too late to correct the current course.

If they truly are the best and the brightest instead of just cheap labor meant to undercut American workers, then companies will not mind paying a premium to get them. That’s why the $100K fee on H1bs is totally appropriate.

It SHOULD cost more to employ a foreigner than it costs to employ an American. That way companies will only do so if they really can’t find Americans who can do the job or for those small number of foreigners who truly are exceptionally bright and talented. Fine. Let them come and let their employers pay for them.

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