Tesla replaced laid off US workers with foreign workers using H-1B visas that Musk want to increase

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: Electrek

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.

While there are obvious benefits to bringing skilled workers into the US, people are divided on the issue because those workers are often paid less than US workers, putting negative pressure on compensation, especially in the tech industry, on top of the moral questions about holding visas over the heads of foreign workers. That’s why the US Congress has mandated a 65,000 visa cap limiting the number of H-1B visas that can be issued each fiscal year, plus an extra 20,000 for foreign people coming out of graduate programs at US universities.

Tesla has been a big user of those visas, and its CEO, Elon Musk, has been using his newfound political influence to promote increasing the cap of H-1B visas. He received significant pushback from his new friends on the right side of the political spectrum in the US, who see this visa as being used to steal jobs from Americans. He is quite passionate about the issue, to say the least:



Read more: https://electrek.co/2024/12/30/tesla-replaced-laid-off-us-workers-with-foreign-workers-using-h-1b-visas-that-musk-want-to-increase/