Would you like to join? Have you been displaced by a foreign worker?
by Smiles
I'm USA and lost job to Canadian
by Michael T. Emmons
Our entire department was ordered by corporate management to train our foreign
replacements. We were an extremely diverse group of male, female, black, white,
Hispanic and Asian Americans. Our replacements were all young male Tata India
employees on H-1b and L-1b visas. It was the most demoralizing time of my
career. I had to use my own hard earned knowledge and train 3 people. Each
learned a different facet of my job. None of my 'trainees' had near the knowledge
or experience as me.
Lucky for me, I found work with a former client and have been employed ever
since. Not so for most of my ex-coworkers. Most didn't find work, many with
multiple degrees and technology/programming certificates.
Thank you,
Michael T. Emmons
by Vivian Hsiung
1. My name is Vivian Hsiung, I am a US citizen, currently residing in Newbury
Park, CA. I graduated from Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY with a master
degree in computer science back in May 1990, and have been working in the tech
industry since.
2. I declare that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the information herein is
true and correct.
3. My job in the tech industry has been largely affected by the large import of H1B
workers - they are mainly from India - for my own experiences in the US tech
industry I have not encountered any non-Indian H1B worker.
4. In 2005 I was asked to train both H1B and off-shore Indian workers. For H1B
Indian, the manager demanded that he sit with me every day to learn everything I
do, and for the off-shore Indian, the manager demanded that I prepare documents for him to follow. Eventually, my job was displaced by them. In recent years as H1B and OPT programs grew in the US, I had a great deal of difficulty in landing a job in the tech industry - everywhere I went, I saw companies either offshore tech jobs to India or import large numbers of H1B Indian workers to US.
5. In 2015, I landed a consulting job, which supposedly would last for six month,
but only one month into the project ,after I fixed the imminent technical problem
on the company’s system, I was told by the Indian manager that the company was
paying $90 an hour for me (I only made $50 an hour, the rest was taken by the
agency), and the same job in India would only cost the company $19 an hour, so he decided to let me go. Obviously, that Indian manager only intended for me to fix their imminent problem, he never intended for me to stay for the entire 6 months, he lied to get me onboard for their emergency situation.
6. I have families and friends, who also had worked in the tech industry and they
similar bad situations. For example, my sister, after working for the same company for over two decades, was laid off one day before she was eligible for a full pension - she was not able to get back into tech industry after that. My ex-husband, Owen Haggerty, also worked in the tech industry – after working in the industry for 30 years, he was laid off in 2009 – like my sister, he was not able to land on another tech job after that layoff. We remained as friends after divorce and he had vented to me on numerous occasions his anger over the H1B abuse, and how the H1B program was the culprit of his not getting a job in the tech industry any more.
7. Both me and my sisters are skilled tech workers, we both graduated from
accredited US universities with a master degree in computer science, we are both
available to be hired as is my ex-husband - the shortage of tech workers claim is a blatant lie. To prove that - I suggest a database into which all available yet
unemployed or underemployed domestic tech workers can register, any aspiring
American who wants to get into tech industry should also be included in the
database. The Americans should be given priority for these jobs . The truth is that
the H1B Indian workers have not only displaced American tech workers but also
deprived us of any tech job opportunity.
8. As I gained more experience in my specialty area, my wage went lower. For
example, in 2008, I was making $70 an hour on W2, but in 2015 and 2017, I was
only making $50 hourly rate on W2 - this is the result of wage suppression via
H1B import. As real data demonstrated that H1B were hired at a lower rate and
they undercut American workers - domestic workers are either displaced by
cheaper H1B workers or deprived of the job opportunities.
9. The notion of importing H1B workers because they can be hired at a cheaper
rate is violating and abusing the real purpose of bringing foreign talents that
Congress intended for H1B.
10. As I demonstrated above, there are available skillful domestic workers ready to be hired, but companies won't hire us because we are more expensive. Also, many Indian outsourcing agencies discriminate against US tech workers - they imported large number of Indian workers from India despite the availabilty of US domestic workers – there have been quite a few discrimination lawsuits filed against those Indian agencies.
11. I recently lost my job due to the impact of pandemic and so far I haven't started on another job, so the Trump administration's proclamation restricting H1B workers into US during pandemic was necessary and imperative for domestic
workers.
12. Over 70 percent of H1Bs are from one country only – India. It is an undeniable
fact that those H1B-reliant companies and Indian outsourcing agencies have been exploiting the H1B visa program to import large quantities of foreign cheap labor – they are foreign cheap labor, not talented foreign labor.
13. I have worked with those H1B Indians for quite some time, and I have
observed that most of them lied about their skill levels and experiences.
14. We need to raise the prevailing wage on H1B to ensure companies bring in
only the most talented not ordinary, cheap laborers - if a company is willing to pay
substantial amounts of wages to H1B, that means it values talent.
15. I also think that there should be a per country quota on H1B OPT programs -
all countries have skilled talented people and this ensures that they all get fair
chances into the US. Also, per country quota on H1B would ensure Indian
outsourcing agencies not exploiting the H1B program, not discriminating
American tech workers, and not depriving other nationals of the opportunities to
come into the US.
16. Congress needs to review the Specialty Occupation requirement, to allow only
H1B trained in that same area get the job. This is necessary and imperative because I remember back in the 90's I encountered Americans, who were originally trained in other non-tech majors like music etc, switched to work in the tech industry because of their ability to learn and adapt quickly. I no longer see Americans in other majors be able to obtain a job in the tech industry due to the large influx of H1B - why should those aspiring Americans be deprived of those job opportunities? it's un-American for those companies/universities to keep importing H1B cheap labor while driving Americans to despair, it’s also dishonest and greedy for those CEOs to exploit H1B for their personal gains.
by Robert Harrison
My name is Robert Harrison and I am an American IT worker who was displaced
by an H-1B visa worker.
Back in July of 2016, the University of California San Francisco Medical Center
made the decision to replace me and my co-workers with a staffing company that
was made up of mostly H-1B visa workers. However, before we were terminated
we were asked to do “knowledge transfer” with our replacements. This was
nothing more than a cost cutting measure.
I was more fortunate than many, after six months I was able to find work again. I
am now a Cisco certified engineer.
I began my tech career pulling cable and eventually I learned the intricacies of
telecommunications architectures such as Nortel and Cisco. I would not have the in
demand skills I have today if not for that early work experience.
I wanted to make sure that other Americans would have those same opportunities,
so I worked with my local assembly man and crafted AB 848, a bill that would
prevent the UC system from engaging in these wholesale outsourcing and
offshoring schemes. In October of 2017, Governor Brown signed it into law.
It is really frustrating to me that our representatives continue to push laws like the
Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act that accelerate the displacement of
Americans. They seem hell-bent on displacing or discarding all of us.
by Naved Hossain
I, Naved Hossain, declare based on personal knowledge as follows:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. I am a STEM-IT (Application Developer/QA Analyst) worker, and a US
citizen. I am over the age of 21 and suffer no impairments that would prevent
me from giving me a declaration.
I was working with Best Western Hotels & Resorts, Phoenix AZ as a Software
Developer between 1999 & 2002. I was replaced from Best Western 2001/2002
by VISA-Temp (H1B) workers along with almost full Development, QA and IT
team including DBAs except a few managerial level staffs and a VISA-H1B
worker, who is the Director of the IT department now, in contrast I am jobless. I
had to train my replacement to get a severance package. Keane India inc. was
the Body Shop who brought in all Temp Workers from India. We were puzzled,
surprised and worried about our unknown future.
After searching for a year or so I was able to get another IT job with Dept. of
Revenue, Arizona with 15k lesser salary. My son was a child at that time, so I
as working by myself only & was having difficulty paying my bills at the end of
the day. I then heard there were better job prospects for IT workers in Atlanta,
GA. So, I left Arizona, after selling house for Atlanta, GA.
In GA, after searching for a year I found another IT job with Vsoft Inc. in
Duluth, GA, and worked there for more or less 2 years as a Software QA
Analyst before getting laid off again along with all my QA team members. As
before we were displaced by VISA workers. So, I went searching for a job
again but was unable to find one in IT even though I have Application
Development, Application Testing, and moderate DB admin experience.
I then moved to Houston, TX where I heard the oil industry was hiring. I lived
there around seven years and was searching for a job in my field but was not
able to find any. Everywhere I went, I saw companies filled with of Visa-H1B.
6. I later moved to Dallas TX, after hearing about more job opportunities there. I
was accepted a job after getting 3 job offers in Dallas. I chose to work with
Maximus Inc, Austin TX, remotely from Dallas as a QA analyst with a condition
(contract to hire after 6 months- full time, that’s why I chose Maximus) through
a Body Shop named, TalTeam Inc., a Herndon, VA based Body Shop.
I worked with Maximus Inc for almost 2 years, successfully, performance wise,
but it proved to be a hostile environment because someone may have been
unhappy with a US citizen in the group, I felt, however also got co-operations
from a few and noticed all other employees are VISA-H1B workers in IT
department but two who are US citizens which includes another person and
myself.
I was let go again on July 17th 2020, for no fault of my own from Maximus Inc,
when current President was nearing his but all other Visa-H1b/L1 were kept and
business was as usual. (Which I found later, by calling someone.) Two weeks
before I was let go, Maximus hired another Visa Worker to do the same tasks as
I was doing and another VISA worker 2 months ago, doing same as I do.
Though I should have been hired as a full-time employee, I never was, they kept
extending my contract, each time for six months. I also found out the other US
citizen who was hired around the time I was hired, was also laid off on August
31st/2020.
My Body Shop informed me about my lay off about a week before and around
end of June/2020, I called team manger to confirm that, and he confirmed and
informed they are re-structuring and would be more lay-offs and asked me not to
discuss with others. Later I found only two citizens were laid off in this
pandemic to face unknown, painful & dignity-less life.
I also received a call from Supervisor at the beginning of July/2020, regarding to
keep this lay off discreet.
by Melissa
The only thing foreign "tech" workers are better at is stealing jobs. They come to this country, do jobs that plenty of qualified Americans can do, then send money that they make in America back to their home country. If that is not a leech I don't know what is.
by Qiqian Liu
Americans are weak, that's why we take your jobs from you. We're better
by Cal
After working for years at a FAANG+ company, I keep getting displaced by overqualified Chinese & Indian "tech" workers that do jobs that are in reality super basic.