September 4, 2026 • 34 mins
Why does Silicon Valley love immigrants? To find the answer, we’re going to hear the story of two tech industry insiders – one a long-time computer programmer turned whistleblower, and another…an immigrant who benefited from the controversial H-1B foreign work visa. He’ll give a perspective that the masters of Big Tech don’t want you to hear.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America. This Labor Day weekend, Red
Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level backstage
membership where you can get ad-free access to our entire
back catalog of episodes. Go to redpilledamerica.com and click the
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at checkout. Join the fam bam and help us save
(00:25):
America one story at a time. This episode was originally
broadcast on March 15th, 2019, and it's just as relevant
today as it was then.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Silicon Valley is known for its ruthless competition, constantly battling
each other to grow even larger. But one area where
they put down their swords is the topic of immigration.
Silicon Valley loves immigrants.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
My view on DACA is the Congress needs to fix DACA,
and fix DACA to me means allow everyone to stay
in the country.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
We benefit from integration. We benefit from diversity.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
The Washington Post reports Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his
wife are donating $ 33 million to fund scholarships for undocumented
immigrants called DREAMers.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing
people they label as others.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
But why? Why does Silicon Valley love immigrants? The truth.
(01:57):
Welcome to Red Pilled America. You'd be hard-pressed to find
a Silicon Valley titan who doesn't want to open our
borders to immigration, both legal and illegal. When someone within
their ranks goes against that orthodoxy, even opposing illegal immigration,
(02:20):
they feel the wrath.
Speaker 7 (02:21):
Protesters targeted the home of tech industry billionaire Peter Thiel.
They are speaking out against the work by one of
his companies that could track airline passengers and other immigrants.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Silicon Valley is unanimously for increasing immigration to the United States.
But as we know, any time a community is unanimously
agreed on a subject, something else is usually afloat. Why
does Silicon Valley want to increase immigration to the United States?
To find the answer, We're going to hear the story
of two tech industry insiders. One, a longtime computer programmer
(02:56):
that became a whistleblower, and another, an immigrant to the
United States who began his career in Silicon Valley. We'll
give a perspective that the masters of big tech don't
want you to hear.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I'm Adriana Cortez. Roger Ross came to the U.S. in
a kind of roundabout way. His parents were actually South
African diplomats.
Speaker 8 (03:26):
We were in South Africa because they had migrated from Europe.
And my father was working for the World Bank organization there.
So I was born and raised in South Africa. And
it just became a really cozy place to grow up.
And my parents never wanted to move back.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
As a young boy, Roger had aspired to come to America.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
I had always set my sights on the American dream,
at least what was depicted about it in the sitcoms
and the Hollywood movies that I watched, that America is
this great land of opportunities and you can pursue all
your dreams. And I really wanted to focus on that
and become part of the American lifestyle. I really valued
(04:12):
that lifestyle to the point where I even adopted and
started to change my accent to to fit in. So
I did everything I could to assimilate into the culture.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
He went to an international school in South Africa that
encouraged its students to study abroad. So before his senior
year of high school, he made the move to America,
to a small town of 10,000 people in Northern California.
Speaker 8 (04:35):
I actually started my journey quite early. I moved to
the United States in 99 and I didn't graduate from
the international school. I graduated from a local public school
here in California. And I came here on like a
foreign exchange basis.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
His high school was a predominantly white public school. And
his years of admiring America made him fit right in
on arrival.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
A lot of the people were very friendly to me.
They were actually astonished by my level of English because
a lot of the foreign exchange students that they had
encountered spoke little English or with a heavy accent. And
they thought that I was just someone who had, you know,
migrated from San Diego and moved up north.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Roger wasn't feeling academically challenged at his new school, so
he enrolled at a nearby college to take collegiate-level classes
while simultaneously finishing high school. He would eventually attend UC Davis,
where he got his bachelor's in applied mathematics and a
master's in economics. By the time he graduated in 2010,
Silicon Valley was making a comeback.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
This was after the recession of 2008, where things started
to be booming in Silicon Valley with Facebook going public
and various other tech companies coming into the limelight and
showing a lot of great success. So we started to
see a boom in the startup industry.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
At the time, the message being pumped out by Silicon
Valley was that American employers needed the foreign students graduating
from our American universities.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
There was a startup that was interested in a market
researcher or a market analyst.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
So Roger applied for the job. And that's when the
startup exposed him to the foreign work visa.
Speaker 8 (06:18):
And they were, you know, they were short on funding,
so they brought me on an H-1B visa.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
An H-1B is a foreign worker visa that purports to
help American employers fill job openings for highly skilled workers.
They're only supposed to be used if the company cannot
find a qualified American worker to fill the job. The
origin of the H-1B visas goes back to the Immigration
Act of 1990.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
This bill provides for vital increases for entry on the
basis of skills, infusing the ranks of our scientists and
engineers and educators with new blood and new ideas.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Washington, D.C. created a whole host of foreign worker visas
that were specifically not supposed to be used to displace
American workers or negatively affect their wages. The employer is
supposed to pay the foreign worker what is called the
prevailing wage. which are the published wage levels that are
usually paid to the majority of workers within a particular
work sector. It's kind of like the minimum wage for
(07:19):
a particular job. This way, the employer could not use
these visas to bring in cheap foreign labor. The problem is,
many big tech firms have been using these visas to
bypass and replace American workers. Many employers like using foreign
worker visas because of the many benefits they get from
using them. One is a cost savings.
Speaker 10 (07:40):
If you're paying an American $ 100, 000 to do a job
and then you pay $ 60, 000 to a foreigner, multiply that
savings by $ 250, 000, that's a lot.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
That's Sarah Blackwell, a Florida-based attorney specializing in employment law
and founder of Protect U.S.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Workers.
Speaker 10 (07:59):
But the ultimate end goal and the end game for
this business model is.
Speaker 7 (08:03):
That most of the work is offshore to India.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (08:07):
And the company pays about $ 9, 000 to $ 10, 000 to those workers.
So you take 250 American workers who are getting an
average of $ 100, 000 and now we're paying Indians in India
to do it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
For $ 10, 000.
Speaker 10 (08:19):
That's some serious savings. And that's, you know, they say, oh,
we say, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Labor cost savings.
Speaker 10 (08:27):
That's where we're getting the $ 5 million bonuses for the CEOs.
And that's why the CEOs are making so much money
because they're using... the lie of lack of workers and
globalism and all of these other arguments for basically using
foreign slave labor, in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
For people working in the United States with a foreign
work visa, many refer to this labor arrangement as legal
indentured servitude because in order to keep their work visas
and remain in our country, they have to work in
conditions American citizens simply would not tolerate.
Speaker 10 (09:06):
The Indian-based companies or even when the American companies hire
the H-1Bs, the H-1Bs have to have a sponsor to
keep their visa. And so they are in a position
to be exploited, to have to work a ton of
hours and to be paid a certain amount, but have
(09:26):
to give money back for certain things. And that happens
a lot. And then the Americans have to compete with that.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So the.
Speaker 10 (09:35):
Having to compete with workers who are staying there 90
hours because if they don't, they could be sent back home.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Roger Ross experienced this exploitation firsthand when he became a
foreign visa worker.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
When I was initially sponsored for it, my correct job
title should have been, you know, that of an economist
or a market researcher or a market analyst. And my
employer saw the prevailing wage in the job handbook and said, oh,
that's too high of a salary. We can't afford to
pay you that. So why don't we make your job,
(10:10):
you know, something that we can find a prevailing wage
that's much more lower. And at the same time, we
want to employ you on a part time basis, but
make you work full time. And you know, that that's
how they exploited me per se. And at that point,
I was just like, okay, I just need to get
(10:31):
the H-1B visa. You know, this is what they want
to do, then so be it. Because I'm just a
fresh college graduate. I'm dying for a job. We're coming
out of a recession. And any job will do because
I had loans to pay myself. So I gladly accepted,
you know, whatever they'd deemed necessary to get me on
(10:53):
the H-1B.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
But what Roger learned was that he lost his ability
to speak up because he was beholden to his employer.
One false move and he could lose his job and
be sent back to his country.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
But as I got my H-1B, I noticed that, you know,
there was no way I could retaliate or make my
voice heard if I felt like I was being dealt
inappropriately with the work or whether I was not being
paid fairly. I just felt like I didn't have a
(11:27):
voice in that. And, you know, that was really problematic.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It's a problem for the foreign worker as well as
for the American worker. Because the exploited foreigner not only
takes the job from an American, they also set the
standard for the Americans still working within the company. And
Americans don't just lose out on new job openings. Sometimes
they're even forced to train their foreign replacement under incredibly
stressful circumstances. That's what happened with Michael Emmons.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
My daughter was born with spina bifida. She's had about
28 surgeries. And I'm training my foreign replacement workers. My insurance,
I'm self-employed, so my medical insurance premiums were $ 947 a month.
And to find out that my trainee's salary is $ 53
more than my medical premiums, I mean, how does an
(12:21):
American compete? And I don't know why, but I decided
to fight it.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
And fight it, Michael did. More Red Pilled America after
the break.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. Michael Emmons has seen
a lot of the United States.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I was born in Mississippi, lived in Tennessee till fourth grade.
Then we went to North Carolina. till seventh, and then
I've been here since eighth grade.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Here being Florida. That's where his father introduced him to programming.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
My father said, why don't you try this? And I
took one class and I was hooked.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Michael did then what so many people are told to
do today. He learned to code.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It was a lot of concepts and learning how to code.
One of my first class, we used an IBM mainframe.
The PCs came in on my senior year. They started
having like a PC lab. We used cards for my
first two classes, you know, where you had like cards
and you programmed on the cards and you ran them
(13:26):
through a card reader.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
He'd eventually graduate from the University of Florida in 1984
with a degree in computer science and began solving people's
problems through coding.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
I worked for Florida Department of Revenue and I created
an application to accept revenue through checks out at the
remote locations. So I then left to go with a
small company that we created a crime laboratory tracking system.
I built a jail system to handle all the money
(13:58):
that inmates get. So when he was arrested, they took
everything from him and they put it into our system
and gave the inmate a receipt. I was working 80
hours a week and they were paying me about 40.
And I asked for a raise and they didn't want
to pay me. So that's when I decided, I'm just
going to go do this on my own.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
He went coding in South Carolina, Texas, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
He ended up at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Writing their, I call it a book-selling application, because to
me it's not really a church.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Then a guy he worked with left the Church of
Scientology and got a job in Silicon Valley working with Siemens.
So Michael took a contracting gig at Siemens working on
voice-over IP phones. What was Silicon Valley like in the 90s?
Did it have the same kind of lore that it
has now?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
It was amazing. To go live in right smack in
the middle of all the stuff that I do and everything,
it was amazing. I really enjoyed it. But I believe
it's changed quite a bit now.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
In what way?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Well, it's overrun with foreign workers.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Michael would soon be overrun himself. After the dot-com bubble
burst in 2001, Seaman merged two of their businesses into one.
They had an office in Florida and offered Michael a
contracting job at that office. He jumped at the chance
because now he'd be able to actually live in his
house instead of being on the road. But it was short-lived.
Speaker 12 (15:41):
In the middle of 2002, the employees in the IT
department were brought into a room that And told them
that they were going to have to train their replacements.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
They didn't know who it was. But they were told
that they were going to basically be let go. But
they want them to train their replacements. So I was
an employee. I was a contractor. So they didn't bring
me into the room. But some of the employees had
told me, this is.
Speaker 8 (16:08):
What's going on.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
About 30 days later, in comes about 30 or so people.
Mostly young male Tata India employees are trainees.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Tata is a huge Indian company that, among other things,
provides a foreign Indian workforce to corporations on American soil.
At the time, Michael can't recall any foreign visa workers
at Siemens and only remembered a few within the IT
industry at large.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
I don't think they had any visa holders working here.
The group I worked for in Sunnyvale, they had about
two or three on H-1Bs. And I knew who they were,
and they were friends of mine, and there was no problem.
You know, we worked together. We taught each other. You know,
we learned from each other.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
But now the entire IT department was being replaced by
Indian workers.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, they assigned us people to train, and they watched
over us as we did things.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Michael was floored. Here was an entire IT department. gainfully employed, many,
like Michael, dependent on their jobs, now all being replaced
by foreign workers. There was no worker shortage. These foreign
workers didn't have high-skilled training that the IT staff didn't have.
I mean, the workers were being trained by the American workers,
for God's sake. No, these American workers were being replaced
(17:29):
by foreign workers because they were simply cheaper. Michael learned
this the hard way.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It was extremely rough at the time. My daughter was
born with spina bifida. She's had about 28 surgeries. And
I'm training my foreign replacement workers. I'm self-employed, so my
medical insurance premiums were $ 947 a month. And to find
out that my trainee's salary is $ 53 more than my
(17:59):
medical premium? I mean, how does an American compete? And
I don't know why, but I decided.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
To fight it. So Michael, a programming whiz... began digging
around on the company's servers and he found some documents.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
So I looked around on the server and I found
Tata's shared drive. And I found all their documents. And
that's where I found the knowledge transfer documents, which I
had given to my U.S. congressman. I found their staffing
document too. And what was interesting in the staffing document
is all but about one or two of the people
(18:35):
were on L-1B visas. Intra-company transfer visas. Tata India transfers
their employees from India to Tata America. Then they sell
them out to businesses in the U.S.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
These L-1B visas are rarely discussed. but they are particularly
harmful to American workers. This visa was originally created to
allow foreign companies to bring their employees with, quote, special
knowledge to help set up a branch in the United States.
But in practice, L-1B visas are used in an entirely
different way. They are predominantly used to replace American workers
(19:27):
with cheap foreign labor. Foreign companies, primarily from India, set
up shop in the United States. then bring their countrymen
into the states and shop them out to American corporations.
Unlike H-1B visas, there are no numerical limits on how
many L-1B visas are issued, and there is no restrictions
on paying the foreign worker a prevailing wage. In other words,
(19:49):
the American corporation can pay them as little as possible.
So these foreign workers become very attractive. When the corporations
hire them, they make their American employees train their replacements.
This process is known as knowledge transfer, and if an
American worker refuses, they receive no severance package. Also, as
a condition of receiving the severance package, the corporation shuts
(20:11):
them up. by making them sign away their right to
speak to the press. These foreign visas are so often
used in the IT business that insiders won't speak out
about them for fear of being blacklisted from the industry.
That's why we seldom hear about this morally reprehensible practice.
We're constantly sold by the big tech industry that foreign
(20:33):
workers are needed because of American worker shortages. But they're lying. Again,
Sarah Blackwell.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
The argument is they're high skilled and that's why we
need them. And we don't have enough American workers to
do the job. That's the argument. But obviously we have
high skilled American workers if the American high skilled workers
are teaching the foreigners how to do their job.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Sarah represented former Disney employees in a high profile case.
In 2014, 250 of the company's IT employees were forced
to train their replacements, which was a large group of
Indian nationals with foreign work visas.
Speaker 10 (21:08):
Well, I filed a RICO lawsuit because these corporations have
a lot of money and they paid some really smart
attorneys to figure out how to break immigration and employment
laws without breaking employment or immigration laws. So basically what
Disney did, if they would have just done on their own,
(21:28):
they would be violating employment law because you can't take
250 people and then replace them all with one race
and one national origin. I mean, that's So these corporations
find loopholes to legally replace American workers with cheap foreign labor,
take advantage of the desperate.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Foreign workers, and gag their former employees so no one
(22:10):
knows what's going on. And they do it all with
the help of our politicians in Washington, D.C. That's why
what Michael Emmons did in 2003 was so important. He
was a pioneer in blowing the whistle on this despicable
corporate scam. When Michael was forced to train his replacements,
he wasn't an employee. He was a contractor. And corporations
at the time were not hip to shutting people up yet.
(22:32):
Michael wasn't going to take this abuse sitting down. He
was a highly skilled programmer, that kept up to date
with the industry's new technology.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
But I've spent my whole career relearning and relearning to
stay proficient in the industry.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So he approached a former customer and said he was
looking for work. They scooped him up, but at a
sizable salary decrease. Nonetheless, that freed him up to blow
the whistle on the entire foreign worker visa scam. The
country was about to learn how corporations were selling out
the American worker. More of Red Pilled America after the break.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney +, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Paramount,
Paramount +, and on and on. What do these streaming
services have in common? They are all storytelling platforms.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Which of these.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
Platforms are you supporting with your hard-earned money? Now ask
yourself if the stories being told on those platforms truly
align with your worldview. And if they don't, ask yourself
where you go to get entertainment in the form of
storytelling that does align with your worldview. Red Pilled America
is that show. We are not another talk show covering
(23:56):
today's news. We are all about telling stories. We remain
the only show of our kind. And why aren't there
more shows like ours? Because it's expensive to create this
kind of content. That's why we need your support. Without
your support, this show doesn't survive. And more importantly, there'll
be zero change to the monopolistic environment of storytelling. Please
(24:17):
visit redpilledamerica.com and click support in the top menu. Support
what you love or it goes away. The choice is yours.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Welcome back to red-pilled America. So Michael Emmons learned that
the company he was working for was replacing their American
tech workers with cheap foreign labor. To add insult to injury,
they were forcing them to train their replacements. Michael wasn't
going to take this sitting down. He secured another job
at a sizable pay decrease, but that freed him up
to blow the whistle on the entire foreign visa scam.
(25:00):
He contacted a local reporter at WKMG Orlando.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
He did stories about maybe some roofer cheating out some lady,
you know, didn't do his roof right. And those were
the kind of stories he had done. So when he
got this international story, he was really excited to do it.
And it took a couple months for them to get
it out.
Speaker 11 (25:23):
What if I told you when you go to work tomorrow,
there'll be someone there to take your job? What if
I told you that you'll have to train that person
to do your job? Sounds rather far-fetched, don't you think?
Speaker 13 (25:35):
Well, it isn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Americans across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans have
lost their jobs and can't get work.
Speaker 11 (25:42):
Mike Emmons and James Granberry were working at Siemens in
Lake Mary, and they both claim the company has replaced
them with cheaper foreign labor.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
At the time, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter,
there was no YouTube, but Michael was a programmer, and
he used that skill to distribute the story over the web.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
So what I did To bring awareness, I would capture
the news on WKMG. I would capture it on my
video camera and then switch it over to my computer,
digitize it, and then serve it up on the Internet.
And I had a little Linux box in my office
here that was my server, and I had 30,000 hits
(26:24):
a week at times.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Eventually, the national news caught wind, with immigration legend Lou
Dobbs covering the story.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
We've been reporting for weeks on this show about the
massive loss of American jobs to foreign countries in our
series of special reports exporting America. What is less well
known is how tens of thousands of foreigners take jobs
in this country every year under special visa programs. Incredibly,
some American workers are training those foreigners to take their
(26:50):
own jobs.
Speaker 14 (26:51):
They held out a carrot for the Americans, a severance.
Stay on and train your replacement workers, then you'll get
the severance when you leave. I stayed on until November
until I landed another job. But what I learned about
these H-1B and L-1 visas is very discouraging for American workers.
Speaker 12 (27:07):
Mike's wife went to work.
Speaker 9 (27:09):
One of their big concerns, uninterrupted health care coverage for
their daughter, born with spinal bifida. Mike found another job
at considerably less pay.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The story even reached the national news desk of Peter Jennings.
Speaker 13 (27:20):
The economy has been struggling to hold on to the
jobs in the face of overseas competition. And ABC's Betsy
Stark tonight has the latest installment in our series, our
ongoing series, Jobless in America.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Not long after Michael Emmons moved his family cross-country to
take a new job as a software programmer, he lost
the job and his employer was Candid Y.
Speaker 14 (27:43):
They called the Americans into a room and they told
them that they were going to be outsourced and they
were going to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Replaced by workers from India, Emmons and his colleagues were
expected to train.
Speaker 14 (27:54):
It was the most demoralizing thing I've ever been through.
I had to now teach foreign workers how to do
my job so they can lay me off.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
What drove Michael was the simple injustice of it all.
the American government was actually allowing and helping corporations replace
American workers, its citizens, with cheap foreign workers.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
But to use visas and say there's not enough Americans
to accomplish their goal to get cheap labor, it's just wrong.
The U.S. Congress created visas that allow corporations that line
their pockets to get rid of their employees.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
We often hear about illegal immigration devastating the American worker,
flooding the labor force with cheap labor, driving down wages,
and taking our working class jobs. We've told those stories
here on Red Pilled America. But it is not just
illegal immigration hurting the American worker. It is legal immigration
as well. That's the position of Roger Ross, an economic
(28:53):
expert who once benefited from a foreign visa.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
I truly think that there's no difference between illegal and
legal immigration when it comes to labor supply economics. It's
all about getting the cheap labor. And as long as
that mantra is propelled on, we're going to see more
devastation of our economic conditions.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
In this country.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Which leads us back to the question, why does Silicon
Valley love immigrants so much? It's simple. Immigrants are cheap
labor that they can exploit. Silicon Valley pushes both legal
and illegal immigration because it helps their bottom line.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
You know, people often talk about two parts of the issue.
High-skill H-1Bs, the issues that tech companies have, and full
comprehensive immigration reform as if they're two completely separate issues.
Silicon Valley is only worried about continued growth, and they're
willing to find that growth at any cost, including replacing
the American workforce. We are living in unprecedented times. Americans
are losing jobs to automation, new technologies, and offshoring.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Some are predicting driverless cars will eliminate over 4 million jobs.
Illegal immigrants have flooded construction, landscaping, farming, house cleaning, factory, janitorial,
and the childcare industries, lowering wages and replacing American workers.
And throughout all of this, Silicon Valley is constantly making
a push to increase foreign work visas. A 2016 report
(30:26):
showed that nearly three-quarters of Silicon Valley techies are foreign-born. Three-quarters.
How many more do they need? The big tech billionaires
are not being altruistic. They're being greedy. They love the
cheap labor. It's just that simple. The situation has become
so dire that it's even triggered Roger Ross, a man
(30:46):
who once benefited from a foreign worker visa, to speak out.
Roger married an American. He is now a permanent resident
with a green card. And he's using his insider knowledge
to the abuse of foreign work visas to inform the
public on this issue.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
I'm just seeing a total change. destruction of our economic conditions.
And that's why I'm beginning to panic. I noticed that
our Congress, as well as future leaders, are still going
about the whole immigration reform concept in the wrong direction.
And that's why we're not seeing any meaningful progress. You're
(31:22):
seeing a total stagnation of our wages. You are also
seeing the labor participation rate which is the true measure
of people employed in the labor force, is declining. And
we're pretty much headed to a cataclysmic condition of our
(31:44):
economic situation, exacerbating to where you're going to have a
lot of our college graduates not being able to find jobs.
They're inundated with student loan debt, and it's piling up
each day. And a lot of our American workers are
not finding the jobs that they want, even though they're
really highly skilled and deserving of the jobs, which, you know,
(32:08):
a lot of the Silicon Valley and the corporatist types
are saying that there's a shortage of. Well, what we're
seeing is that there's a standard discrimination of workers who
are either American or are at a higher age. There's
this whole ageism discrimination that's going on. where if you're
past the age of 30 years old, you're not as
(32:31):
valuable to the company because they know you would warrant
a higher pay based on the experience that you have.
And they don't want to pay those salaries. So that's
why they would rather hire someone who's a younger OPT
international student or a younger H-1B who will happily accept
(32:51):
the wages in exchange for immigration benefits.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
When coal workers were losing their jobs during the Obama administration,
journalists suggested that they should learn to code to find employment. Well,
Michael Emmons actually learned to code, long before the advice
came from our thoughtful media. But in the age of
big tech, learning to code is hardly a failsafe when
Silicon Valley continues to push for more and more foreign workers.
(33:27):
Silicon Valley is pulling a con job on the American
people by claiming we need more foreign workers. We don't.
And if we continue to let big tech dictate our
immigration policy, we can kiss the American dream goodbye.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
If you think your living space is cramped, take a
look at this truck.
Speaker 13 (33:44):
It looks like any other, right?
Speaker 8 (33:45):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
No, it's not.
Speaker 8 (33:47):
This truck is actually home for a.
Speaker 13 (33:49):
23-year-old man who works for Google.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
It's actually parked right outside the headquarters of Google.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced
by me, Adriana Cortez, and Patrick Karelchi for Informed Ventures.
Now our entire archive of episodes is only available to
our backstage subscribers. To subscribe, visit redfieldamerica.com and click support
in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America. This Labor Day weekend, Red
Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level backstage
membership where you can get ad-free access to our entire
back catalog of episodes. Go to redpilledamerica.com and click the
link on the homepage and enter the phrase Labor Day
at checkout. Join the fam bam and help us save
(00:25):
America one story at a time. This episode was originally
broadcast on March 15th, 2019, and it's just as relevant
today as it was then.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Silicon Valley is known for its ruthless competition, constantly battling
each other to grow even larger. But one area where
they put down their swords is the topic of immigration.
Silicon Valley loves immigrants.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
My view on DACA is the Congress needs to fix DACA,
and fix DACA to me means allow everyone to stay
in the country.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
We benefit from integration. We benefit from diversity.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
The Washington Post reports Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his
wife are donating $ 33 million to fund scholarships for undocumented
immigrants called DREAMers.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing
people they label as others.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
But why? Why does Silicon Valley love immigrants? The truth.
(01:57):
Welcome to Red Pilled America. You'd be hard-pressed to find
a Silicon Valley titan who doesn't want to open our
borders to immigration, both legal and illegal. When someone within
their ranks goes against that orthodoxy, even opposing illegal immigration,
(02:20):
they feel the wrath.
Speaker 7 (02:21):
Protesters targeted the home of tech industry billionaire Peter Thiel.
They are speaking out against the work by one of
his companies that could track airline passengers and other immigrants.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Silicon Valley is unanimously for increasing immigration to the United States.
But as we know, any time a community is unanimously
agreed on a subject, something else is usually afloat. Why
does Silicon Valley want to increase immigration to the United States?
To find the answer, We're going to hear the story
of two tech industry insiders. One, a longtime computer programmer
(02:56):
that became a whistleblower, and another, an immigrant to the
United States who began his career in Silicon Valley. We'll
give a perspective that the masters of big tech don't
want you to hear.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I'm Adriana Cortez. Roger Ross came to the U.S. in
a kind of roundabout way. His parents were actually South
African diplomats.
Speaker 8 (03:26):
We were in South Africa because they had migrated from Europe.
And my father was working for the World Bank organization there.
So I was born and raised in South Africa. And
it just became a really cozy place to grow up.
And my parents never wanted to move back.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
As a young boy, Roger had aspired to come to America.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
I had always set my sights on the American dream,
at least what was depicted about it in the sitcoms
and the Hollywood movies that I watched, that America is
this great land of opportunities and you can pursue all
your dreams. And I really wanted to focus on that
and become part of the American lifestyle. I really valued
(04:12):
that lifestyle to the point where I even adopted and
started to change my accent to to fit in. So
I did everything I could to assimilate into the culture.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
He went to an international school in South Africa that
encouraged its students to study abroad. So before his senior
year of high school, he made the move to America,
to a small town of 10,000 people in Northern California.
Speaker 8 (04:35):
I actually started my journey quite early. I moved to
the United States in 99 and I didn't graduate from
the international school. I graduated from a local public school
here in California. And I came here on like a
foreign exchange basis.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
His high school was a predominantly white public school. And
his years of admiring America made him fit right in
on arrival.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
A lot of the people were very friendly to me.
They were actually astonished by my level of English because
a lot of the foreign exchange students that they had
encountered spoke little English or with a heavy accent. And
they thought that I was just someone who had, you know,
migrated from San Diego and moved up north.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Roger wasn't feeling academically challenged at his new school, so
he enrolled at a nearby college to take collegiate-level classes
while simultaneously finishing high school. He would eventually attend UC Davis,
where he got his bachelor's in applied mathematics and a
master's in economics. By the time he graduated in 2010,
Silicon Valley was making a comeback.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
This was after the recession of 2008, where things started
to be booming in Silicon Valley with Facebook going public
and various other tech companies coming into the limelight and
showing a lot of great success. So we started to
see a boom in the startup industry.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
At the time, the message being pumped out by Silicon
Valley was that American employers needed the foreign students graduating
from our American universities.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
There was a startup that was interested in a market
researcher or a market analyst.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
So Roger applied for the job. And that's when the
startup exposed him to the foreign work visa.
Speaker 8 (06:18):
And they were, you know, they were short on funding,
so they brought me on an H-1B visa.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
An H-1B is a foreign worker visa that purports to
help American employers fill job openings for highly skilled workers.
They're only supposed to be used if the company cannot
find a qualified American worker to fill the job. The
origin of the H-1B visas goes back to the Immigration
Act of 1990.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
This bill provides for vital increases for entry on the
basis of skills, infusing the ranks of our scientists and
engineers and educators with new blood and new ideas.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Washington, D.C. created a whole host of foreign worker visas
that were specifically not supposed to be used to displace
American workers or negatively affect their wages. The employer is
supposed to pay the foreign worker what is called the
prevailing wage. which are the published wage levels that are
usually paid to the majority of workers within a particular
work sector. It's kind of like the minimum wage for
(07:19):
a particular job. This way, the employer could not use
these visas to bring in cheap foreign labor. The problem is,
many big tech firms have been using these visas to
bypass and replace American workers. Many employers like using foreign
worker visas because of the many benefits they get from
using them. One is a cost savings.
Speaker 10 (07:40):
If you're paying an American $ 100, 000 to do a job
and then you pay $ 60, 000 to a foreigner, multiply that
savings by $ 250, 000, that's a lot.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
That's Sarah Blackwell, a Florida-based attorney specializing in employment law
and founder of Protect U.S.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Workers.
Speaker 10 (07:59):
But the ultimate end goal and the end game for
this business model is.
Speaker 7 (08:03):
That most of the work is offshore to India.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (08:07):
And the company pays about $ 9, 000 to $ 10, 000 to those workers.
So you take 250 American workers who are getting an
average of $ 100, 000 and now we're paying Indians in India
to do it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
For $ 10, 000.
Speaker 10 (08:19):
That's some serious savings. And that's, you know, they say, oh,
we say, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Labor cost savings.
Speaker 10 (08:27):
That's where we're getting the $ 5 million bonuses for the CEOs.
And that's why the CEOs are making so much money
because they're using... the lie of lack of workers and
globalism and all of these other arguments for basically using
foreign slave labor, in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
For people working in the United States with a foreign
work visa, many refer to this labor arrangement as legal
indentured servitude because in order to keep their work visas
and remain in our country, they have to work in
conditions American citizens simply would not tolerate.
Speaker 10 (09:06):
The Indian-based companies or even when the American companies hire
the H-1Bs, the H-1Bs have to have a sponsor to
keep their visa. And so they are in a position
to be exploited, to have to work a ton of
hours and to be paid a certain amount, but have
(09:26):
to give money back for certain things. And that happens
a lot. And then the Americans have to compete with that.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So the.
Speaker 10 (09:35):
Having to compete with workers who are staying there 90
hours because if they don't, they could be sent back home.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Roger Ross experienced this exploitation firsthand when he became a
foreign visa worker.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
When I was initially sponsored for it, my correct job
title should have been, you know, that of an economist
or a market researcher or a market analyst. And my
employer saw the prevailing wage in the job handbook and said, oh,
that's too high of a salary. We can't afford to
pay you that. So why don't we make your job,
(10:10):
you know, something that we can find a prevailing wage
that's much more lower. And at the same time, we
want to employ you on a part time basis, but
make you work full time. And you know, that that's
how they exploited me per se. And at that point,
I was just like, okay, I just need to get
(10:31):
the H-1B visa. You know, this is what they want
to do, then so be it. Because I'm just a
fresh college graduate. I'm dying for a job. We're coming
out of a recession. And any job will do because
I had loans to pay myself. So I gladly accepted,
you know, whatever they'd deemed necessary to get me on
(10:53):
the H-1B.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
But what Roger learned was that he lost his ability
to speak up because he was beholden to his employer.
One false move and he could lose his job and
be sent back to his country.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
But as I got my H-1B, I noticed that, you know,
there was no way I could retaliate or make my
voice heard if I felt like I was being dealt
inappropriately with the work or whether I was not being
paid fairly. I just felt like I didn't have a
(11:27):
voice in that. And, you know, that was really problematic.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It's a problem for the foreign worker as well as
for the American worker. Because the exploited foreigner not only
takes the job from an American, they also set the
standard for the Americans still working within the company. And
Americans don't just lose out on new job openings. Sometimes
they're even forced to train their foreign replacement under incredibly
stressful circumstances. That's what happened with Michael Emmons.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
My daughter was born with spina bifida. She's had about
28 surgeries. And I'm training my foreign replacement workers. My insurance,
I'm self-employed, so my medical insurance premiums were $ 947 a month.
And to find out that my trainee's salary is $ 53
more than my medical premiums, I mean, how does an
(12:21):
American compete? And I don't know why, but I decided
to fight it.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
And fight it, Michael did. More Red Pilled America after
the break.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. Michael Emmons has seen
a lot of the United States.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I was born in Mississippi, lived in Tennessee till fourth grade.
Then we went to North Carolina. till seventh, and then
I've been here since eighth grade.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Here being Florida. That's where his father introduced him to programming.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
My father said, why don't you try this? And I
took one class and I was hooked.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Michael did then what so many people are told to
do today. He learned to code.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It was a lot of concepts and learning how to code.
One of my first class, we used an IBM mainframe.
The PCs came in on my senior year. They started
having like a PC lab. We used cards for my
first two classes, you know, where you had like cards
and you programmed on the cards and you ran them
(13:26):
through a card reader.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
He'd eventually graduate from the University of Florida in 1984
with a degree in computer science and began solving people's
problems through coding.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
I worked for Florida Department of Revenue and I created
an application to accept revenue through checks out at the
remote locations. So I then left to go with a
small company that we created a crime laboratory tracking system.
I built a jail system to handle all the money
(13:58):
that inmates get. So when he was arrested, they took
everything from him and they put it into our system
and gave the inmate a receipt. I was working 80
hours a week and they were paying me about 40.
And I asked for a raise and they didn't want
to pay me. So that's when I decided, I'm just
going to go do this on my own.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
He went coding in South Carolina, Texas, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
He ended up at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Writing their, I call it a book-selling application, because to
me it's not really a church.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Then a guy he worked with left the Church of
Scientology and got a job in Silicon Valley working with Siemens.
So Michael took a contracting gig at Siemens working on
voice-over IP phones. What was Silicon Valley like in the 90s?
Did it have the same kind of lore that it
has now?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
It was amazing. To go live in right smack in
the middle of all the stuff that I do and everything,
it was amazing. I really enjoyed it. But I believe
it's changed quite a bit now.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
In what way?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Well, it's overrun with foreign workers.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Michael would soon be overrun himself. After the dot-com bubble
burst in 2001, Seaman merged two of their businesses into one.
They had an office in Florida and offered Michael a
contracting job at that office. He jumped at the chance
because now he'd be able to actually live in his
house instead of being on the road. But it was short-lived.
Speaker 12 (15:41):
In the middle of 2002, the employees in the IT
department were brought into a room that And told them
that they were going to have to train their replacements.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
They didn't know who it was. But they were told
that they were going to basically be let go. But
they want them to train their replacements. So I was
an employee. I was a contractor. So they didn't bring
me into the room. But some of the employees had
told me, this is.
Speaker 8 (16:08):
What's going on.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
About 30 days later, in comes about 30 or so people.
Mostly young male Tata India employees are trainees.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Tata is a huge Indian company that, among other things,
provides a foreign Indian workforce to corporations on American soil.
At the time, Michael can't recall any foreign visa workers
at Siemens and only remembered a few within the IT
industry at large.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
I don't think they had any visa holders working here.
The group I worked for in Sunnyvale, they had about
two or three on H-1Bs. And I knew who they were,
and they were friends of mine, and there was no problem.
You know, we worked together. We taught each other. You know,
we learned from each other.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
But now the entire IT department was being replaced by
Indian workers.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, they assigned us people to train, and they watched
over us as we did things.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Michael was floored. Here was an entire IT department. gainfully employed, many,
like Michael, dependent on their jobs, now all being replaced
by foreign workers. There was no worker shortage. These foreign
workers didn't have high-skilled training that the IT staff didn't have.
I mean, the workers were being trained by the American workers,
for God's sake. No, these American workers were being replaced
(17:29):
by foreign workers because they were simply cheaper. Michael learned
this the hard way.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It was extremely rough at the time. My daughter was
born with spina bifida. She's had about 28 surgeries. And
I'm training my foreign replacement workers. I'm self-employed, so my
medical insurance premiums were $ 947 a month. And to find
out that my trainee's salary is $ 53 more than my
(17:59):
medical premium? I mean, how does an American compete? And
I don't know why, but I decided.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
To fight it. So Michael, a programming whiz... began digging
around on the company's servers and he found some documents.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
So I looked around on the server and I found
Tata's shared drive. And I found all their documents. And
that's where I found the knowledge transfer documents, which I
had given to my U.S. congressman. I found their staffing
document too. And what was interesting in the staffing document
is all but about one or two of the people
(18:35):
were on L-1B visas. Intra-company transfer visas. Tata India transfers
their employees from India to Tata America. Then they sell
them out to businesses in the U.S.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
These L-1B visas are rarely discussed. but they are particularly
harmful to American workers. This visa was originally created to
allow foreign companies to bring their employees with, quote, special
knowledge to help set up a branch in the United States.
But in practice, L-1B visas are used in an entirely
different way. They are predominantly used to replace American workers
(19:27):
with cheap foreign labor. Foreign companies, primarily from India, set
up shop in the United States. then bring their countrymen
into the states and shop them out to American corporations.
Unlike H-1B visas, there are no numerical limits on how
many L-1B visas are issued, and there is no restrictions
on paying the foreign worker a prevailing wage. In other words,
(19:49):
the American corporation can pay them as little as possible.
So these foreign workers become very attractive. When the corporations
hire them, they make their American employees train their replacements.
This process is known as knowledge transfer, and if an
American worker refuses, they receive no severance package. Also, as
a condition of receiving the severance package, the corporation shuts
(20:11):
them up. by making them sign away their right to
speak to the press. These foreign visas are so often
used in the IT business that insiders won't speak out
about them for fear of being blacklisted from the industry.
That's why we seldom hear about this morally reprehensible practice.
We're constantly sold by the big tech industry that foreign
(20:33):
workers are needed because of American worker shortages. But they're lying. Again,
Sarah Blackwell.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
The argument is they're high skilled and that's why we
need them. And we don't have enough American workers to
do the job. That's the argument. But obviously we have
high skilled American workers if the American high skilled workers
are teaching the foreigners how to do their job.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Sarah represented former Disney employees in a high profile case.
In 2014, 250 of the company's IT employees were forced
to train their replacements, which was a large group of
Indian nationals with foreign work visas.
Speaker 10 (21:08):
Well, I filed a RICO lawsuit because these corporations have
a lot of money and they paid some really smart
attorneys to figure out how to break immigration and employment
laws without breaking employment or immigration laws. So basically what
Disney did, if they would have just done on their own,
(21:28):
they would be violating employment law because you can't take
250 people and then replace them all with one race
and one national origin. I mean, that's So these corporations
find loopholes to legally replace American workers with cheap foreign labor,
take advantage of the desperate.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Foreign workers, and gag their former employees so no one
(22:10):
knows what's going on. And they do it all with
the help of our politicians in Washington, D.C. That's why
what Michael Emmons did in 2003 was so important. He
was a pioneer in blowing the whistle on this despicable
corporate scam. When Michael was forced to train his replacements,
he wasn't an employee. He was a contractor. And corporations
at the time were not hip to shutting people up yet.
(22:32):
Michael wasn't going to take this abuse sitting down. He
was a highly skilled programmer, that kept up to date
with the industry's new technology.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
But I've spent my whole career relearning and relearning to
stay proficient in the industry.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So he approached a former customer and said he was
looking for work. They scooped him up, but at a
sizable salary decrease. Nonetheless, that freed him up to blow
the whistle on the entire foreign worker visa scam. The
country was about to learn how corporations were selling out
the American worker. More of Red Pilled America after the break.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney +, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Paramount,
Paramount +, and on and on. What do these streaming
services have in common? They are all storytelling platforms.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Which of these.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
Platforms are you supporting with your hard-earned money? Now ask
yourself if the stories being told on those platforms truly
align with your worldview. And if they don't, ask yourself
where you go to get entertainment in the form of
storytelling that does align with your worldview. Red Pilled America
is that show. We are not another talk show covering
(23:56):
today's news. We are all about telling stories. We remain
the only show of our kind. And why aren't there
more shows like ours? Because it's expensive to create this
kind of content. That's why we need your support. Without
your support, this show doesn't survive. And more importantly, there'll
be zero change to the monopolistic environment of storytelling. Please
(24:17):
visit redpilledamerica.com and click support in the top menu. Support
what you love or it goes away. The choice is yours.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Welcome back to red-pilled America. So Michael Emmons learned that
the company he was working for was replacing their American
tech workers with cheap foreign labor. To add insult to injury,
they were forcing them to train their replacements. Michael wasn't
going to take this sitting down. He secured another job
at a sizable pay decrease, but that freed him up
to blow the whistle on the entire foreign visa scam.
(25:00):
He contacted a local reporter at WKMG Orlando.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
He did stories about maybe some roofer cheating out some lady,
you know, didn't do his roof right. And those were
the kind of stories he had done. So when he
got this international story, he was really excited to do it.
And it took a couple months for them to get
it out.
Speaker 11 (25:23):
What if I told you when you go to work tomorrow,
there'll be someone there to take your job? What if
I told you that you'll have to train that person
to do your job? Sounds rather far-fetched, don't you think?
Speaker 13 (25:35):
Well, it isn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Americans across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans have
lost their jobs and can't get work.
Speaker 11 (25:42):
Mike Emmons and James Granberry were working at Siemens in
Lake Mary, and they both claim the company has replaced
them with cheaper foreign labor.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
At the time, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter,
there was no YouTube, but Michael was a programmer, and
he used that skill to distribute the story over the web.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
So what I did To bring awareness, I would capture
the news on WKMG. I would capture it on my
video camera and then switch it over to my computer,
digitize it, and then serve it up on the Internet.
And I had a little Linux box in my office
here that was my server, and I had 30,000 hits
(26:24):
a week at times.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Eventually, the national news caught wind, with immigration legend Lou
Dobbs covering the story.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
We've been reporting for weeks on this show about the
massive loss of American jobs to foreign countries in our
series of special reports exporting America. What is less well
known is how tens of thousands of foreigners take jobs
in this country every year under special visa programs. Incredibly,
some American workers are training those foreigners to take their
(26:50):
own jobs.
Speaker 14 (26:51):
They held out a carrot for the Americans, a severance.
Stay on and train your replacement workers, then you'll get
the severance when you leave. I stayed on until November
until I landed another job. But what I learned about
these H-1B and L-1 visas is very discouraging for American workers.
Speaker 12 (27:07):
Mike's wife went to work.
Speaker 9 (27:09):
One of their big concerns, uninterrupted health care coverage for
their daughter, born with spinal bifida. Mike found another job
at considerably less pay.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The story even reached the national news desk of Peter Jennings.
Speaker 13 (27:20):
The economy has been struggling to hold on to the
jobs in the face of overseas competition. And ABC's Betsy
Stark tonight has the latest installment in our series, our
ongoing series, Jobless in America.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Not long after Michael Emmons moved his family cross-country to
take a new job as a software programmer, he lost
the job and his employer was Candid Y.
Speaker 14 (27:43):
They called the Americans into a room and they told
them that they were going to be outsourced and they
were going to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Replaced by workers from India, Emmons and his colleagues were
expected to train.
Speaker 14 (27:54):
It was the most demoralizing thing I've ever been through.
I had to now teach foreign workers how to do
my job so they can lay me off.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
What drove Michael was the simple injustice of it all.
the American government was actually allowing and helping corporations replace
American workers, its citizens, with cheap foreign workers.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
But to use visas and say there's not enough Americans
to accomplish their goal to get cheap labor, it's just wrong.
The U.S. Congress created visas that allow corporations that line
their pockets to get rid of their employees.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
We often hear about illegal immigration devastating the American worker,
flooding the labor force with cheap labor, driving down wages,
and taking our working class jobs. We've told those stories
here on Red Pilled America. But it is not just
illegal immigration hurting the American worker. It is legal immigration
as well. That's the position of Roger Ross, an economic
(28:53):
expert who once benefited from a foreign visa.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
I truly think that there's no difference between illegal and
legal immigration when it comes to labor supply economics. It's
all about getting the cheap labor. And as long as
that mantra is propelled on, we're going to see more
devastation of our economic conditions.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
In this country.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Which leads us back to the question, why does Silicon
Valley love immigrants so much? It's simple. Immigrants are cheap
labor that they can exploit. Silicon Valley pushes both legal
and illegal immigration because it helps their bottom line.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
You know, people often talk about two parts of the issue.
High-skill H-1Bs, the issues that tech companies have, and full
comprehensive immigration reform as if they're two completely separate issues.
Silicon Valley is only worried about continued growth, and they're
willing to find that growth at any cost, including replacing
the American workforce. We are living in unprecedented times. Americans
are losing jobs to automation, new technologies, and offshoring.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Some are predicting driverless cars will eliminate over 4 million jobs.
Illegal immigrants have flooded construction, landscaping, farming, house cleaning, factory, janitorial,
and the childcare industries, lowering wages and replacing American workers.
And throughout all of this, Silicon Valley is constantly making
a push to increase foreign work visas. A 2016 report
(30:26):
showed that nearly three-quarters of Silicon Valley techies are foreign-born. Three-quarters.
How many more do they need? The big tech billionaires
are not being altruistic. They're being greedy. They love the
cheap labor. It's just that simple. The situation has become
so dire that it's even triggered Roger Ross, a man
(30:46):
who once benefited from a foreign worker visa, to speak out.
Roger married an American. He is now a permanent resident
with a green card. And he's using his insider knowledge
to the abuse of foreign work visas to inform the
public on this issue.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
I'm just seeing a total change. destruction of our economic conditions.
And that's why I'm beginning to panic. I noticed that
our Congress, as well as future leaders, are still going
about the whole immigration reform concept in the wrong direction.
And that's why we're not seeing any meaningful progress. You're
(31:22):
seeing a total stagnation of our wages. You are also
seeing the labor participation rate which is the true measure
of people employed in the labor force, is declining. And
we're pretty much headed to a cataclysmic condition of our
(31:44):
economic situation, exacerbating to where you're going to have a
lot of our college graduates not being able to find jobs.
They're inundated with student loan debt, and it's piling up
each day. And a lot of our American workers are
not finding the jobs that they want, even though they're
really highly skilled and deserving of the jobs, which, you know,
(32:08):
a lot of the Silicon Valley and the corporatist types
are saying that there's a shortage of. Well, what we're
seeing is that there's a standard discrimination of workers who
are either American or are at a higher age. There's
this whole ageism discrimination that's going on. where if you're
past the age of 30 years old, you're not as
(32:31):
valuable to the company because they know you would warrant
a higher pay based on the experience that you have.
And they don't want to pay those salaries. So that's
why they would rather hire someone who's a younger OPT
international student or a younger H-1B who will happily accept
(32:51):
the wages in exchange for immigration benefits.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
When coal workers were losing their jobs during the Obama administration,
journalists suggested that they should learn to code to find employment. Well,
Michael Emmons actually learned to code, long before the advice
came from our thoughtful media. But in the age of
big tech, learning to code is hardly a failsafe when
Silicon Valley continues to push for more and more foreign workers.
(33:27):
Silicon Valley is pulling a con job on the American
people by claiming we need more foreign workers. We don't.
And if we continue to let big tech dictate our
immigration policy, we can kiss the American dream goodbye.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
If you think your living space is cramped, take a
look at this truck.
Speaker 13 (33:44):
It looks like any other, right?
Speaker 8 (33:45):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
No, it's not.
Speaker 8 (33:47):
This truck is actually home for a.
Speaker 13 (33:49):
23-year-old man who works for Google.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
It's actually parked right outside the headquarters of Google.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced
by me, Adriana Cortez, and Patrick Karelchi for Informed Ventures.
Now our entire archive of episodes is only available to
our backstage subscribers. To subscribe, visit redfieldamerica.com and click support
in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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