Silicon Valley tech companies may have to raise wages and salaries in order to attract high-skilled American workers in the age of President Donald Trump.
Data collected from more than 10,000 tech companies found that hiring of foreign workers in the industry had fallen 46 percent in the first quarter of 2017 and 37 percent in the second quarter, according to a report by the Financial Times.
“Hired” chief executive Mehul Patel says Silicon Valley may have to begin raising wages as U.S. tech companies begin to recruit and compete for more Americans than foreign nationals.
The Financial Times wrote:
Mr Patel said large tech companies with buoyant valuations and start-ups benefiting from a boost in venture capital cash were all increasing their hiring. The shortage of workers was clear, he said, as each company had more jobs available and was making more requests to candidates per jobs, anticipating a competitive market.
Tech companies might have to boost salaries further, look for freelance consultants or recruit even more in places outside the San Francisco Bay Area to get the talent they need, he said.
Silicon Valley elites have benefited greatly from not only the H-1B visa program, which imports foreign workers to take Americans’ jobs but also from the current U.S. mostly low-skilled legal immigration system where one million legal immigrants are admitted every year.
There are four pipelines to importing low-skilled foreign nationals for corporations. Those include immigrants who come to the U.S. legally; non-immigrants who come to the U.S. on any of the employment-based visa programs available; foreign nationals who are allowed to work legally on Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) – like those given amnesty through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program; and illegal aliens who enter the U.S. mostly through the southern border.
This week, Silicon Valley elites clamored for the continuance of mass immigration of low-skilled immigrants to continue, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Following Trump’s endorsement of the RAISE Act, which would cut legal immigration to 500,000 admissions a year in order to relieve Americans of the immigration burden, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s open borders group and former Twitter CEO both blasted the plan, claiming it would not benefit their companies to admit immigrants based on merit and skills.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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