There have been episodes
Trump continued his sweeping crackdown on immigration on Friday, turning his focus to a visa program for skilled foreign workers. He signed a proclamation that adds a $100,000 fee for new applicants for H-1B visas that allow foreign workers like software engineers a chance to be employed in the United States.
The H-1B visa is designed to help companies fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities cannot be found. But immigration hard-liners and far-right activists have long argued that the visa allows companies to replace American workers with foreign ones.
And, the Times inexplicably neglects to say, pay them less. It could be said that the H-1B visa is designed to help companies fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities who are willing to work as cheaply cannot be found.
To obtain an H-1B visa, employers must attest that they have searched for qualified domestic candidates first, and that an H-1B worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers.
There have been episodes in which the program has been used to bring immigrants for jobs that American workers had held. In 2015, about 250 technology workers at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., were told that they were being laid off, and that they would have to train their replacements — H-1B visa holders who had been brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Similar episodes that year affected employees of Toys “R” Us and the New York Life Insurance Company.
The quest for cheaper labor never ends.
The program requires employers to pay H-1B workers, at a minimum, either the average wage for the job and the city where it is based, or the average wage of American-born workers doing the same job. Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 percent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which cited the Labor Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels.
In other words they’re “prohibited” from paying less but they do it anyway. What a surprise.
