Google, Amazon Hire Low-Paid Foreigners After Layoffs

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and Facebook parent Meta have hired low-paid foreign workers just weeks after laying off thousands of employees, the New York Post reports.

The companies have also applied for H-1B visa applications for engineers, which critics say undermine U.S. workers.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, if American technology specialists did not have to compete with foreigners, computer scientists, for example, would have earned 2.6% to 5.1% more in 2017. They would also have had 6.1% to 10.8% more positions available to them.

Technology companies have laid off more than 168,000 people so far in 2023 alone, according to Layoffs.fyi.

Google, which recently cut 12,000 jobs, has filed applications for low-paid foreign workers to take on specialized technology positions at the company—including software engineers, analytical consultants and user experience researchers.

The U.S. also approved Google’s H-1B visa applications, which are good for three years and can be extended another three years.

Technology companies have hired lobbyists to pressure the Biden administration and lawmakers to expand H-1B visas, which may be why there were 780,884 H-1B applications in this year’s computer-run lottery, up 61% from 483,927 last year. 2022’s applications were up 57% from 308,613 applications in 2021.

The U.S. issues only about 85,000 of these visas every year.

Meta, Amazon, Zoom, Salesforce, Microsoft and Palantir have also filed for additional H-1Bs.

None of the companies cited in the article responded to NYP requests for comment.