"Last April, Electrek reported that Tesla dismissed about 15,000 U.S. employees, mostly in Texas and California -- but then the company moved to fill those same jobs with imported labor at lower cost. "Current and former Tesla employees said that many of the laid-off US workers were replaced by foreign workers using H-1B visas," the website reported on Dec. 30. "These claims are backed by US Department of Labor data, which show that Tesla requested over 2,000 H-1B visas during the time it was laying off US workers. ... Tesla workers said that many employees let go were more senior engineers with higher compensation and they have been replaced with junior engineers from foreign countries at a lower pay. "Lambert offered his own nuanced view of the controversy, which is that H-1B visas may well have a legitimate role in supporting U.S. tech industries but can also be abused -- which may be what Musk has been doing. He points out that the H-1B rules afford corporations like Tesla enormous power over the visa-holding workers, who can only remain here as long as they are employed by the firm that sponsored them. In other words, those workers have far less autonomy and clout than unionized worker in auto -- and we already know how much Musk hates unions. One need not endorse the bigotry of Bannon and Loomer -- nor their ridiculous views on immigration -- to acknowledge that they are probably right about Musk and other bosses lining up to exploit MAGA "nationalism" for their own power and enrichment."
