Silicon Valley Company Caught Paying Foreign Workers $1.21/Hr After $200M Quarter

A Silicon Valley tech company that reportedly made $200 million last quarter was importing foreign workers from India and paying them $1.21 an hour. 

According to the Labor Department, “about eight employees of Fremont-based Electronics For Imaging [EFI] were flown in from India and worked 120-hour weeks to help with the installation of computers at the company’s headquarters.” NBC Bay Area noted that “the employees were paid their regular hourly wage in Indian rupees, which translated to $1.21.” 

EFI claimed it “unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local US standards.” The company reportedly must pay “$40,000 in back wages to the employees” and was fined $3,500. 

According to NBC Bay Area, another tech company last year “faced similar charges and was fined for underpaying employees from Mexico an hourly wage of $2.66,” and “federal officials said both cases are particularly egregious, given the booming labor market and the wealth in Silicon Valley.”

Even though there is a surplus of American high-tech workers, high-tech companies continue to clamor for more guest-worker visas to lower the wages of their workers. Companies like Microsoft have lobbied for massive increases in foreign workers even while laying off 18,000 American workers.

Importing foreign workers pushes wages downward for jobs that are available, which is why H-1B expert and Howard University professor Ron Hira has said that massive increases in guest-worker visas will “cut off” opportunities for more Americans to enter the middle class via tech jobs. Hira has repeatedly emphasized that “people who come from working-class backgrounds” have used technology jobs as a “way of getting into the middle class and the professional class,” as Breitbart News has reported.