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’
Exactly.
But they stay long enough to collect their bonus for cost-cutting, I'm sure.
Bkmk
And they are just as dangerous as any nation.
“AGAINST ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND _________”
Yep.
Like all traitors, they should be dealt with accordingly...
That last sentence is a lie. They want people to work for slave wages and not have to pay health care or any other costs.
Probably even more dangerous than foreign powers. It's the result of being indoctrinated to worship the Corporate "Free" market as if the market was somehow superior and immune to the natural laws put in place to correct the behavior of those who worship Created Things - as described in Romans 1:25+
Corporate Collectives operating under thinly veiled Marxist doctrine are a cancer within what's left of America's Godly free enterprise.
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.Business competition makes no sense to Cruz...Cruz doesn't believe in the free market, he's a lawyer, that's all he knows. He wants to control competition with legislation. Got it.
So, I’ve introduced legislation to increase the number of H-1B visas'THAT make no sense. Introduce legislation that takes jobs away so they can't take jobs away Well unless you're shilling for the Chamber of Commerce and crony capitalists.
Is there a need for H1B workers? Maybe for business expansion but not as a replacement for laying off employees.
Hey Ted. How do H1B workers live here on less money than the American's they replace? Government subsidies?
Why do you hate Capitalism? /sarc
Corporate Collectives operating under thinly veiled Marxist doctrine are a cancer within what's left of America's Godly free enterprise.
Amen!
If my job goes to a cheap labor foreigner, that IS the bigger picture. Support Cruz? No way.
What they said:
“Qualcomm and other tech firms have argued that they turn to H-1Bs because there is a significant shortage of American talent available.”
What they mean:
“Qualcomm and other tech firms have argued that they turn to H-1Bs because there is a significant shortage of American talent available foolish enough to work 60 hours a week at all hours of the day and night and be on call the other 108 hours, for cheap and in servitude.”
Capitalism is a useful servant but a fearful master.
I lost my good paying job because my company decided the folks in Bombay, India were cheaper to deal with. Anyone who wants to win the presidency better have a pro-America,pro-growth message and I don’t think supporting H-1B visas should be part of that platform.
Qualcomm has been notorious since it started for preferring to hire foreign workers over Americans.
So sorry if that is the size of your life.
What about the job you do for Christ... ???
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