If the claim sounds illogical,\nthat\u2019s because it is. In one of their most desperate attempts yet to promote\nmass immigration during a time of unprecedented employment, some in the open\nborders lobby are now claiming that temporary foreign workers are actually\nsaving the American economy and, somehow, reducing the unemployment rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According<\/a> to economist and mass immigration advocate David Henderson, \u201cSkilled immigrants helped save our butts\u201d during the COVID-19 pandemic. He suggested \u2013 without evidence \u2013 that the tech industry would have failed to manage the sudden increased demand for \u201cwork from home\u201d technology if it wasn\u2019t for foreign workers. Henderson also claimed that if corporations didn\u2019t have the option to hire H-1B visa applicants, \u201cit could take time to find a non-immigrant, and the non-immigrant might not be quite as good in the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Open-borders proponent Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute also added to this false narrative<\/a> by claiming that without temporary labor \u201ccomputer science employment in the United States would have been 3.8 percent to 9 percent lower…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, corporations aren\u2019t\nturning to foreign workers because they face a shortage of skilled labor in the\nUnited States. They are doing so because they don\u2019t want to pay American\ncitizens a fair market wage when they could opt for foreigner employees that could\nface removal from the country if they ever pushed for better pay. Nowrasteh\neven admits in his same article that \u201cwages for computer scientists would have\nbeen 3\u20134 percent higher\u201d if companies weren\u2019t opting for migrant workers. And\nthat estimate is almost certainly on the low end of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an eye-opening Twitter thread published just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, Michelle Malkin aggregated<\/a> a multitude of news articles exposing dozens of corporations that recently fired a cumulative total of more than 10,000 tech employees. Most of these corporations did so while simultaneously hiring foreign workers for similar work. One notable example, Cisco, recently laid off nearly 500 tech employees almost immediately after applying for 691 H-1B visas, almost all of which were approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uber, Walgreens, Macy\u2019s, Expedia, Tripadvisor, LogMeIn, Intel, and other large corporations also took part in the firing spree. And again, many of them, such as Uber,<\/a> did so while simultaneously increasing their number of H-1B visa applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n