Posted on 07/31/2015 8:22:21 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
Another tech giant that says it must import foreign workers because there aren’t enough skilled American workers in the industry is laying off thousands of workers.
Qualcomm — a major producer of smartphone chips — announced last week it’s eliminating 15 percent of its workforce or about 4,500 employees, just weeks after fellow tech giant Microsoft announced a massive round of layoffs.
Both companies are top beneficiaries of the H-1b visa program, which backers say allows companies to temporarily hire foreign workers for jobs they can’t find qualified Americans workers to fill. Critics contend the program is really used to cut costs. (RELATED: Displaced American Workers Sue DHS Over New Visa Rule)
Microsoft and Qualcomm were in the top 15 users of H-1b visas in Fiscal Year 2013, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data obtained by Computer World. They’re part of a major tech lobbying effort to increase the cap on these temporary workers, on the grounds there is a shortage of Americans with science, technology, engineering and math degrees.
“Qualcomm has been engaged within the technology industry in highlighting the ‘skills deficit’ in all areas of today’s workforce, especially engineering,” a spokeswoman for Qualcomm told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is an industry-wide problem, and we are committed to working to build the pipeline of students studying STEM fields.”
One in five of the new Qualcomm hires in Fiscal Year 2013 were foreign workers with H-1b visas, according to an analysis of SEC filings by Ron Hira, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who is an expert in offshoring. Those 900 foreign workers hired in 2013 triple the total number of workers Qualcomm hired in 2014.
“Qualcomm and other tech firms have argued that they turn to H-1Bs because there is a significant shortage of American talent available,” Hira told TheDCNF. “Given the recent large layoff announcements by Qualcomm, Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco, how can the tech industry continue to argue there’s a shortage of American workers?” (RELATED: Senators Ask Feds to Investigate Guest Worker Visa Abuse)
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hira also analyzed the skills of H-1b workers Qualcomm hired from Fiscal Year 2010 through 2012, and found most of the workers weren’t the highly skilled, U.S.-trained workers lobbyists imply make up the majority of H-1b holders.
Thirty-five percent of the 1,265 workers Qualcomm hired at that time held only a bachelors degree, and just 32 percent held advanced U.S. degrees. Only 44 of them held Ph.Ds from U.S. universities.
“This is very different than the carefully constructed, and misleading, narrative constructed by the tech industry that the H-1b program is primarily a vehicle for keeping people from abroad that the U.S. trained, and paid for,” Hira told TheDCNF.
NEXT PAGE: ‘I’m sure that a lot of the people laid off could be doing the jobs taken by the H-1bs’
Let’s see the starting salaries and benefits packages for the H-1Bs vs new US-national hires.
They’re not hiring the H-1Bs because they are paid more.
And Senator Cruz wants to increase H1B by 500%. No. This is one of the reasons I stopped supporting him.
>>They’re not hiring the H-1Bs because they are paid more
Uhuh.
Nothing like having their feet dangling over the starving teeth of the caste system for motivation.
This un-American practice needs to stop.
Sadly, not just by the tech industry:
'Cruz said, “we should improve and streamline legal immigration.” He also discussed H-1B visas arguing that in the status quo, “every year US colleges and universities educate tens of thousands of foreign students who are getting masters and PhDs in engineering and math and computer science, and we’re sending them back to their countries. And as a result, they’re going back to their countries, they’re starting businesses there. They’re creating jobs there, and their companies are competing with us and taking jobs away from us. I don’t think that makes any sense. So, I’ve introduced legislation to increase the number of H-1B visas' - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3309118/posts
Qualcomm is in trouble right now on multiple fronts and none of its problems can be fixed with H1b or outsourcing.
They have process problems, thermal problems and customer problems.
Intel and MS are the biggest H1b/outsourcing offenders.
Intel is blaming hard working people for executive level mistakes.
MS simply wants cheap workers who do what they are told no matter what crap they are told to code.
Calling Donald Trump and Scott Walker ... Calling Bernie Sanders...
The politicians pushing to bring in all these foreigners should be put on trial for treason.
The same for Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
Who do these companies think is going to be buying their products. If they fire Americans we won’t have any money.
In 20 years America will be the third world country with low wage workers.
How about restricting foreign students from our universities?
Not enough cheep labor.
Perfection we will never get in a mortal. Even Reagan’s halo helped hide some missteps.
It is exactly this single issue mindedness that is a chief blocker of blessings from God, which is the ultimate source of blessings. Mortals tend to play zero sum games; God doesn’t. Suppose the pie itself could be grown... remember, ye olde supply side, before the liberals really mucked it up?
Including his biggest one, George HW Bush.
In 20 years America will be the third world country with low wage workers.
What, gutting America's middle class doesn't sound like a conservative policy to you?
The things that matter in eternity can’t be measured in dollars and cents. Those are the things that God clamors most loudly to get right. Do that, then other blessings likely appear, not as earnings or as a fixed piece of a fixed pie, but as evidence of grace.
Which goes to show, hankering for another Reagan is misplaced. We need to do the best under God (remember that?) with the cards we now can play, not the cards we wish we had now to play.
It won't be grown by indentured serf drones.
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