Free Republic

U.S. legislators have significantly diluted the provision in the proposed legislation to tax remittances to other countries, including to India. The latest version of the Bill, released on Friday (June 27, 2025), reduces the tax on remittances to 1% from the earlier proposal of 3.5%, and excludes remittances made from bank accounts and other financial institutions and those made via debit or credit cards from the tax. The 1% tax will now apply only on remittances made in cash, a money order, or a cashier’s check. According to international tax experts, this will come as a significant relief to the...

Most of Donald Trump’s supporters aren’t buying Big Tech’s attempts to suck up to the president, according to nationwide poll results exclusively obtained by The Post. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Big Tech bosses have launched a charm offensive since Trump won the White House – flocking to his January inauguration, making trips to the Oval Office and scrapping fact-checking operations that had been accused of anti-conservative censorship. However, 54% of Trump voters – and 70% of voters overall – believe the moves are part of a cynical ploy to sway the president to embrace Big Tech policy positions,...

Reporting Highlights Temp to Permanent: There’s periodic debate over the 120,000 foreigners annually awarded temporary H-1B visas, but almost no attention to the process by which many receive green cards. Filled, Then Verified: Foreign workers are eligible for permanent residency only when no U.S. citizens can do the job — but companies confirm that after foreigners have been employed as temps. Lost in Print: The law also requires that companies advertise these jobs in the classified ads of Sunday print newspapers, decreasing the chances that U.S. applicants see the listing. It’s a tough time for the rank-and-file tech worker or...

Vice president JD Vance's photo with Indian-origin venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani became a flashpoint amid the H-1B row as social media users questioned what was the purpose of the visit at a time when MAGA activists are opposing the US's quota for H-1B programs.

Walmart is cutting 1,500 jobs in a bid to reduce expenses and streamline decision-making, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. A separate Bloomberg report stated that the layoffs will affect corporate staff at the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as employees in other office locations. The cuts include roles within Walmart’s global technology team, according to sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. News of Walmart cutting jobs in technology has reignited the H1B row, with some accusing the world’s biggest retailer of undercutting American jobs for its own profit....

Another radical-left Democrat has contracted a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and is proposing a hopeless strategy in response. And the Trump White House has taken notice. On Monday, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), a native of India, flew back into DC after yet another unwarranted congressional vacation and decided to file a whopping SEVEN articles of impeachment against President Trump. And unsurprisingly, the catalyst for Thanedar filing articles of impeachment was Trump daring to deport a dangerous MS-13 gangster and alleged wife-beater. “Trump has already done real damage to our democracy,” Thandedar whined. “But defying a unanimous 9-0...

Evan Richardson grew up in Silicon Valley, surrounded by big tech companies that transformed how people live, socialize and work.As a curious kid, Richardson took apart electronics and put them back together. A career in technology seemed like a natural and safe path after his service in the military.“Tech was always an industry you go into, you’re going to make a lot of money and you’re never going to get fired,” he said.For thousands of tech workers like Richardson, those days are over. In March, the 43-year-old Hayward resident was caught off guard when he learned his employer, payment company...

Sen. Richard “Dick” Durbin will not seek reelection. He has been in Congress for 44 years. Durbin, 80, posted a video announcement about his decision titled "Time to Pass the Torch" on X.

Hundreds of students and recent graduates have seen their visas revoked by immigration officials since United States President Donald Trump took office for a second time on January 20, 2025, with several also arrested. Many of the targets of the visa revocations and arrests are students who participated in pro-Palestine protests which erupted on campuses across the country in 2024 amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Others are individuals with more indirect links to Palestine – or those who have shown support for Gaza on social media. The Trump administration alleges that these students spread anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment on...

Two Microsoft employees were fired for protests condemning the company’s support for Israel at a 50th anniversary event last week. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman was interrupted by shouts from software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad during his speech at the Friday celebration while Vaniya Agrawal, another engineer, interjected during a question-and-answer session with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, CEO Satya Nadella and former CEO Steve Ballmer. Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that the company’s commercial artificial intelligence (AI) is being used by the Israel Defense Force in Gaza. “How dare you celebrate when Microsoft is killing children,” Aboussad yelled as...

Fortune 500 companies have unwittingly hired thousands of software engineers who claim to be American developers but are actually North Korean citizens using stolen or fake identities. Through legitimate employment, the IT workers are illegally funneling their salaries to Kim Jong Un’s regime to fund prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. Treasury, State Department, and FBI collectively estimate the IT workers scam has generated hundreds of millions each year since 2018. About 95% of the résumés Harrison Leggio gets in response to job postings for his crypto startup g8keep are from North Korean engineers pretending...

A bipartisan bill reintroduced in Congress last month could offer long-awaited relief to small tech companies hit hardest by an obscure federal tax change — one that many founders say is threatening their survival. The American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act of 2025 (HR 1990), introduced last month by US Reps. Ron Estes (R-KS) and John Larson (D-CT), would restore the ability for companies to immediately take tax deductions on research and development costs, including software development labor. The act would undo the controversial Section 174 change that took effect in 2022, which now requires businesses to amortize those costs...

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance argues that importing cheap foreign labor through mass immigration has led to declining productivity and economic stagnation in the West. Speaking at a summit of venture capitalists hosted by Andreesen Horowitz on Tuesday, the Vice President stated the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are “addicted to cheap labor,” which has fueled over 40 years of economic policy failures.“I’d say that if you look in nearly every country, from Canada to the UK, that imported large amounts of cheap labor, you’ve seen productivity stagnate,” Vance told technology industry investors attending the summit. He continued:...

Federal authorities said the Brown University assistant professor and doctor deported to Lebanon despite having an H-1B visa expressed support and attended the funeral of a slain Hezbollah leader responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old physician specializing in kidney transplants who was most recently living in Rhode Island, was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday while coming back from a trip to Lebanon. Alawieh was questioned by CBP and allegedly told federal agents she had attended the funeral of Nasrallah, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sady reportedly wrote in a new filing Monday....

This was a crappy flight. Passengers aboard an Air India flight to Delhi suffered a 10-hour trip to nowhere when the plane was forced to circle back to Chicago because all but one of its toilets allegedly became clogged and inoperable. Air India Flight 126 was making its way over Greenland on March 5 when 11 out of its 12 toilets broke down, with the only working toilet located in the business class section for some 300 passengers to use, View From The Wing reported. The extended pee-pee dance began nearly five hours into the 14 hour trip, according to...

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly favouring foreign workers over American citizens in its hiring practices. A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the lawsuit, which claims Meta prefers H-1B visa holders because they can be paid less, must proceed. The lawsuit was filed by three U.S. citizens—Purushothaman Rajaram, an IT worker; Ekta Bhatia, a software engineer; and Qun Wang, a data scientist. They allege that they applied for multiple positions at Meta between 2020 and 2024 but were not hired despite being qualified. They argue that Meta...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) stated that if there is a vote on a continuing resolution with changes to reflect DOGE’s work, — like what House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested on Wednesday could be the means to avert a government shutdown — Democrats “should vote no. There’s no way we can go along with just blanket cuts where Congress hasn’t been consulted.” Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “Congressman, if that comes up for a vote, a CR with the changes made to account for what DOGE has done so far, how do you...

Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters Tuesday that the administration plans to offer a “gold card” that would confer legal residency to foreigners at a cost of about $5 million. They said it would replace an existing U.S. visa program for overseas investors that’s long been mired in controversy. The president and Lutnick outlined a program that would also allow corporations to purchase U.S. residency, commonly known as a “green card,” for high-skilled or highly educated employees, suggesting it might replace some kinds of work visa. “ It’s going to be giving you green card privileges plus,” Trump...

Companies that prefer migrants and H-1B visa workers over Americans will face federal investigations and discrimination lawsuits, says Andrea Lucas, who President Donald Trump picked to serve as acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). “The EEOC is putting employers and other covered entities on notice: if you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop,” Lucas said in a February 20 notice. “The law applies to you, and you are not above the law. The EEOC is here to...

Back in 2012, “learn to code” was an optimistic mantra. Born from a viral marketing campaign for one of the earliest coding boot camps, it promised recession-burned career-changers a future-proof option. But that was when the future looked somewhat different.Recent cohorts of aspiring software developers are now looking for jobs in a post-pandemic tech sector riven by rampant layoffs. The Coding Bootcamp subreddit, a community with 48,000-plus members, is teeming with recent posts from graduates who are struggling to find work. Prospects have gotten so dire that one of the leading boot camps, Launch Academy, recently paused enrollment, citing a...