Tesla has replaced some of its US employees who were let go as part of a big wave of layoffs earlier this year with foreign workers using H-1B visas, which CEO Elon Musk is now campaigning to increase.
Over the last week, Elon Musk has been promoting the increase of H-1B visas, which are used to bring foreign workers into the US for “specialty occupations.”
Qualified foreign workers need to be sponsored by a company to get the visa, which lasts three years, extendable to six years, after which the holder needs to reapply.
The visa holder must maintain employment at the visa sponsor to retain the work visa. The worker would have to leave the country if the employment ends for whatever reason. This has led to some criticism as it gives tremendous power to the employer and can lead to a modern version of indentured servitude.
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[Edit typo.]
Imagine if you lost your job to an H-1B visa holder and you voted Trump to make America great again. Boy would you feel dumb…
I don’t follow. Wouldn’t that person be happy that Trump is trying to deport the person you were replaced by in this situation?
Nah. Trump loves H-1Bs. He used to hate H-1Bs but his new corporate masters gave him new convictions.
Anyway, he promised to deport the ten billion illegal immigrants that commit rape, murders and eat pets up and down the country on day one of his presidency. He said nothing about legal indentured workers that make his billionnaire buddies money.
I know all of that, but in the specific situation above wouldn’t the laid-off worker feel happy that the company who wronged them is now suffering?
Tesla is suffering? Where?
All I see is Tesla having replaced a bunch of expensive US workers who can unionize and walk out at will with underpaid foreigners who have a strong incentive to not get the sack. The only “cost” to them is a little extra egg on their CEO’s face, who already carries an entire omelette on it anyway and doesn’t seem to mind.
I’d say Tesla is doing fine, and the only people who suffer are the poor SOBs who got fired, and the rest of us for years to come because a critical number of short-sighted voters decided to reelect the orange utan who will empower his billionnaire buddies to do more of the same.
Where in the post was Tesla mentioned? I’m talking specifically about the hypothetical situation outlined in the post.
- Person A is laid off from their job so that their company can exploit a foreign worker for lower pay.
- Foreign worker is deported.
- Company is now without a worker, whereas they wouldn’t be in this position if they weren’t using exploitative business practices.
- Person A feels that Company is getting their just desserts.
Am I misreading something?
I’m not sure which alternate reality you’re reading this Lemmy post from, but in mine, I read an article about Tesla firing US employees to replace them with H-1B workers 🙂
I wasn’t referring to the article, I was referring to the specific reply that we’re chatting about
Item 2 is your error, the foreign person would be here on a work visa so not an illegal immigrant. So person A is without a job while their company gets to pay someone less for doing the same work.
I think I misread “increase” as “decrease” because the conversion for the past few weeks has been on how Republicans want to get rid of H1B workers. Now they’ve totally 180’d?
Trump isn’t trying to deport H1B workers, though. Well he was until a few days ago when his billionaire masters said otherwise so now he’s not.
Aha that’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Thanks!
Bruh imagine being a person who voted for Trump because you were against immigrants than Trump’s Daddy takes away your job and gives it to an immigrant
If you’ve been MAGA all this time, you’ll somehow find a way to shift the blame from Trump to $ENEMY.
It does fit the President Musk narrative. You play around with H1B you can skirt some pesky American labor laws, pay less, etc. I’d be curious to know what the benefits package, if any, looks like for H1B workers. We need a contract to post.
Musk is not a friend to the American working class, as defined by his behaviors. Quite the opposite.
Great system btw. Jack up the price of education making it inaccessible to Americans. Screw around with the loan system such that student debt never really gets paid down. (Someone in Musks tier is cashing in there). Contest student loan forgiveness on people who’d been paying for 10yrs (condition to get the forgiveness), win.
Give education spots to people from other countries instead.
But you have your degree and debt and have a job now too. Then, as an American, get fired only to be replaced with an H1B worker.
Outsourcing American education and jobs inside the United States.
American Dream level, that.
A friendly reminder to everybody here that the problem with this is not that “H-1B immigrants have the job instead,” but that “H-1B immigrants can be easily abused via deportation threats.”
It’s an easy thing to forget when you’ve got headlines like this one that subtly phrase this scenario (intentionally or not) as though it’s the “immigrants work here now” part that’s the problem. Were it that H-1B workers were properly protected, and citizens were given sufficient social safety nets and welfare programs to thrive despite this, there’d be no issue whatsoever.
I remember at an old job that I noticed everyone leaving was a citizen and the only people sticking it out were on visas.
Yeah, I didn’t want to edit the title, but I post again an important paragraph:
The visa holder must maintain employment at the visa sponsor to retain the work visa. The worker would have to leave the country if the employment ends for whatever reason. This has led to some criticism as it gives tremendous power to the employer and can lead to a modern version of indentured servitude.
Both can be problems, if the goal of hiring H1B is to depress wages.
That’s the fault of the employer, not immigrants. Immigrants having jobs is never the issue.
When companies lay off US citizens then turn around and hire foreigners as replacements, the original employees are understandably upset. It’s true that it is the company’s fault, but it is also true that an H1B visa holder is working a job that should be occupied by a domestic worker.
Someone being fired and replaced by someone else is not inherently wrong, and that doesn’t change at all whether they’re an immigrant or not. What you seem to be complaining about is the practice of companies doing so specifically so that they can get a cheaper worker who can be abused more, or doing so when the original employee had done nothing wrong; however, phrasing this as “an H1B visa holder is working a job that should be occupied by a domestic worker” is the absolute wrong way to go about it, because this makes it sound as though an immigrant having a job is fundamentally less worthwhile than a citizen having it.
This is a government policy failure, allowing misuse of the H1B program. Be angry at the company and the government, but don’t blame the worker who is inherently in a worse position than the domestic worker, both in and out of work, for taking the job.
I never said we should blame the worker.
Look at all those cute Leopards!
So they were right about that replacement theory after all. /s
So there were Americans who had the right skills and qualifications otherwise how would you be able to lay off anyone?
