Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

The implied “problem” is that these companies are loopholing the H1-B process to hire for positions that American workers were laid off from. Of course, lawyers know how to make things work.

> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.

Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located.

This is not surprising. Big tech would love to fire 50% of their engineers and replace them all with H1Bs.

Immigrants get shit done.

There are multiple missing things for this:

1. Layoffs happened regardless of visa status, so visa workers were part of the layoffs.

2. The visa applications for H1B could be for workers already working in the company under a different visa like TN or F1

3. The positions affected by layoffs and positions filing for H1B could be different. For example, a front end position may be affected by layoffs, but the visa application could be for an ML eng.

4. Visa could also be for more tenured staff. Plenty of companies are now only hiring staff+ roles after the layoffs

5. Because of the lottery system and how it works, you could have filed for a visa before a certain date but then before the visa was picked, the worker was laid off. i.e. you filed for a visa in Feb for the April lottery but laid off the person in March, giving the illusion that you filed for a visa after laying people off.

Big tech is redistributing extremely privileged salaries to tragically underserved markets. I applaud them.