That whole "it doesn't look like job replacement" is completely ludicrous, because math.
H-1B exists solely because industry says they can't find needed talent. If you've just had a huge number of layoffs of said talent, you should be getting 0 H-1Bs.
I agree that this looks fishy, but they could be replacing different skillsets or firing people who they thought had a skillset but didn't demonstrate it after a year.
There is no legal requirement like that. H1 has a simple rule - that you should have a degree and work on a field that USCIS considers specialized. Comp engineering is one of them
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 ?
Actually, there is a legal requirement like that. Businesses that hire h1b visa recipients must file an LCA with the USDOL, that essentially states it has looked and cannot find an equally qualified US Citizen for the position that is seeking the visa. The original 'ruse' the H1B visa was to address was the supposed shortage of qualified engineers in technical professions. The only shortage that ever existed was of low-paid professionals. One simply has to look on one of the online job boards to see how the system is gamed. Many positions require quite a mix of programming languages, frameworks and knowledge up and down the stack.
They also have a simple rule that you can't hire a guest worker without considering domestic applicants. These companies shouldn't be allowed to dispense inconvenient citizens who can be retrained for these jobs while bumping up their visa pool. Lack of any enforcement or penalties makes that a meaningless requirement but the current administration claimed it was going to do something about this kind of abuse. They don't even have to wrestle with Congress to make meaningful improvements on how the program is run.
That's the law as written, but it is commonly sold to the public as the parent post's "filling competitive positions with talent that can't be found domestically."
H-1B exists solely because industry says they can't find needed talent. If you've just had a huge number of layoffs of said talent, you should be getting 0 H-1Bs.