While this was certainly great what @realDonaldTrump did for the TVA workers, there are many American tech workers who continue to see their jobs outsourced & eventually off-shored.
We need laws & regulations that prevent this from happening in the first place.#RNC2020Convention
What about the AT&T, Verizon, Disney, UCSF, Vanguard, & etc, workers who saw their jobs outsourced to H-1B dependent IT bodyshops? Who’s saving their jobs?
The ‘fissuring’ business model coupled with the H-1B visa program are in serious need of reform & regulation.
While there’s no doubt Joe Biden’s immigration plan would be disastrous for American workers, the Trump Admin has been quite lacking in bringing about any real changes to the rules & regulations governing work visa programs. POTUS has appointed the swamp to high level positions.
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Alarming to see @SecretaryLCD get basic H-1B facts wrong. She claims employers must first advertise jobs to Americans first—which is FALSE. There’s no labor market test required, just self-attestation. How can you reform a program to protect Americans if you don’t understand it?
@TheElizMitchell: “Should employers be required to pay H-1B workers the same as American workers?”
@SecretaryLCD: “Some IT bodyshops didn’t pay their H-1Bs; we need to recover those wages because it depresses American wages.”
Notably, she never mentions Trump’s H-1B proclamation directing @USDOL to use rule-making to raise prevailing wage requirements, which currently allows employers to hire H-1Bs at a discount.
When asked whether the OPT program—which allows foreign grads to stay and compete for U.S. jobs against American grads—should be ended, @SecretaryLCD said it’s Congress’s responsibility because they created it. Except, OPT wasn’t created by Congress; it was established through administrative regulations, meaning the administration could end it. Again, how can you claim to be protecting American workers when you can’t get basic facts right and are fishing for excuses?
Big Tech: “We can’t find qualified Americans to fill these positions.”
Also Big Tech: “We need to place these PERM job ads where no Americans will see them.”
Facebook “couldn’t find qualified Americans” — so they hid jobs from their careers site, refused to consider U.S. workers, and made applicants mail resumes by postal mail, DOJ says.
Apple “couldn’t find qualified Americans” — so they hid jobs from their careers site, refused to consider U.S. workers, and made applicants mail resumes by postal mail. Paid a fine and settled with the DOJ.
Trump admin is defending an Obama-era policy that grants work authorization to the spouses of H-1B workers from India in the Green Card queue — even though Congress never approved it — and is urging SCOTUS to toss out a case brought by former U.S. tech workers.
In 2015, Obama’s DHS unilaterally gave certain H-4 visa holders — spouses of H-1B guest workers — the right to work in the U.S., even though Congress never approved it.
This has opened the door for hundreds of thousands of additional foreign workers to compete directly with Americans for jobs, despite the original H-4 visa having no work privileges.
While H-1B workers are bound to their employers and must file a labor condition application to ensure they are paid a prevailing wage and that their presence won’t harm American workers (though it’s obviously a rigged process), H-4 EAD holders face none of those requirements — they can work ANY job at ANY wage level.
If you want to understand how the law lets employers legally pay H‑1B workers less than market wages and how that harms American workers, our latest Substack explains it.
🧵 THREAD:
At the heart of this is the Labor Condition Application (LCA), a brief form employers submit to @USDOL before hiring H‑1B workers.
It’s meant to protect local wage standards and keep Americans from being undercut. In practice, it’s a rubber‑stamp process with no real scrutiny.
The system relies on employers to truthfully select wage levels based on an H‑1B worker’s skills and experience. But because the DOL can’t verify that information, employers exploit this asymmetry, labeling skilled roles as entry‑level to pay lower wages:
1/ While American engineering graduates struggle with stagnant wages and limited job opportunities, they face an additional challenge that receives insufficient attention: intense competition from foreign guest workers who are systematically imported to fill engineering positions.
The scope of this competition is staggering. In 2023, while America graduated 137,237 citizen engineers with bachelor's or master's degrees, the federal government simultaneously approved at least 33,836 foreign guest workers with engineering backgrounds through just three major guest worker programs.