According to Wired magazine, at least 160,000 workers in the high-tech industry lost their jobs in 2022, along with more than 100,000 so far in 2023. That’s more than a quarter million layoffs and firings in a little more than a year. Most of those are American citizens with families to support facing a brutally competitive job market. Yet whom is Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post most concerned about?
You guessed it. The temporary “guest workers” from India here on H-1B visas. In an article dated today, “High-skilled visa holders at risk of deportation amid tech layoffs,” WaPo recounts the pains suffered by Indian workers as they face possible deportation after losing their jobs.
“[T]hings were going good,” complains one Indian worker of Boston, until he was laid off from his job at PayPal this month. Now he faces (the horror!) of having to return to his home country. “Returning to India just because my H1B is not being supported is the worst way to leave a country which is known as the opportunity place.”
That “opportunity place” for Americans is largely a delusion, of course. Thanks to big business lobbies that have bought and paid for politicians of both parties, and thanks to enterprising guest workers like the fellow from Boston, real wages for Americans have remained stagnant for 40+ years.
As America’s decline accelerates, the “opportunity place” will be closing up shop for everyone, and the Indians will be decamping for greener pastures. So it goes.
For more, see The Hindu.