I'm not talking about any legal requirement. Two things:
1. I'm simply refuting the ludicrous-on-its-face idea that if you just laid off hundreds of highly paid technical employees, that then hiring double the amount of H-1B's the following year, claiming you are not "displacing any American workers" is total BS.
2. Regardless of the letter of the law, certainly the political justification of why the US should have the H-1B program at all, which is argued by all the SV lobbying groups, is that the US needs workers in specialized fields because there aren't enough US workers.
Also, FWIW, I believe H-1B is a horrible program because it really only benefits the companies while basically allowing the visa holders to be treated like slaves. I'd be much more in favor of a simple "skilled occupations" global lottery that wasn't tied to any specific employer, with stronger protections to ensure visa holders aren't underpaid.
First of all, we need to get facts correct. They didn't lay off one year and increase H1b the next year. They had a total approval of 299 visas in 2019. Which means, some of them were approved in Jan and others may have been approved in October. The article deliberately obfuscates that to generate clicks.
Second, let's take a hypothetical situation. Let's Uber has a US citizen who is a poor performer, and a H1 employee who is a rock star. Let's say both make $300K. Are you suggesting that Uber should layoff the rockstar first simply based on national origin ?
1. I'm simply refuting the ludicrous-on-its-face idea that if you just laid off hundreds of highly paid technical employees, that then hiring double the amount of H-1B's the following year, claiming you are not "displacing any American workers" is total BS.
2. Regardless of the letter of the law, certainly the political justification of why the US should have the H-1B program at all, which is argued by all the SV lobbying groups, is that the US needs workers in specialized fields because there aren't enough US workers.
Also, FWIW, I believe H-1B is a horrible program because it really only benefits the companies while basically allowing the visa holders to be treated like slaves. I'd be much more in favor of a simple "skilled occupations" global lottery that wasn't tied to any specific employer, with stronger protections to ensure visa holders aren't underpaid.