NY– Some of the largest technology companies, including Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, have hired foreign workers just weeks after cutting the workforce by thousands, according to a report cited by The New York Post.
Google, which laid off some 12,000 employees earlier this year, filed applications for low-paid foreign workers to come to the United States and take on highly specialized tech roles within the company, according to investigative journalist Lee Fang.
The Alphabet-owned search engine submitted applications for dozens of foreign workers seeking to fill positions, including software engineers, analytics consultants, user experience researchers and others, Fang wrote in his Substack newsletter on Tuesday.
Google-owned freelance team Waymo has also received government approval for H-1B visa applications for engineering jobs, according to Fang.
The newly recruited workers from abroad will start working at the company on August 17, according to reports.
Other firms, including Meta, Amazon, Zoom, Salesforce, Microsoft and Palantir, have also filed for more H-1B applications, according to Fang.
H-1B visas, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, have been a lightning rod in the immigration debate, with critics saying they are used to undermine US citizens and lawful permanent residents.
They are issued for three years and can be extended for another three years.
Fang cited a 2017 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found that “salaries for American computer scientists would have been 2.6 to 5.1 percent higher,” while “computer science employment for American workers would have been between 6.1 and 10.8 percent higher in 2001 in the absence of immigration.
The number of applications for visas used in the technology industry soared for the second year in a row, raising “serious concerns” that some are manipulating the system to gain an unfair advantage, authorities said last month.
According to Fang, tech companies have hired lobbyists to pressure lawmakers and the Biden administration to expand the number of H-1B visas being issued.
There were 780,884 applications for H-1B visas in this year’s computer-generated lottery, up 61 percent from last year’s 483,927, US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a message to the ” concerned parties”.
Each year, up to 85,000 people are selected for H-1B visas.
The website Layoffs.fyi, which keeps an updated record of the total number of workers who have lost their jobs this year, reported more than 168,000 layoffs in the technology sector.
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