T-Mobile CEO Praises BLM, Slams Tucker Carlson, and Imports Foreigners for U.S. Jobs

T-Mobile Chief Operating Officer Mike Sievert speaks at the Quibi keynote address January
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

The CEO of T-Mobile cited the Black Lives Matter movement as he pulled adverts from Tucker Carlson, who is gaining viewers by targeting the pipelines of visa workers that T-Mobile uses to fill many good U.S. jobs.

“T-Mobile stands with the Black Community,” said a June 9 message from CEO Mike Sievert. He continued:

We firmly believe that racism, hatred and inequality have no place in our world – and every person has the right to feel safe, seen and heard.

At the same time, we know that systemic racism is real.  It has been persistent.  And it can’t be wished away.  If we want a better world, we have to ACT to create it.

On June 10, Sievert announced that the German-owned firm would stop advertising on Carlson’s TV show, amid complaints from people who are angry at Carlson’s criticism of the Black Lives Matter controversy. 

But Carlson is the most prominent critic of the corporate visa-worker pipelines, which divert job opportunities and wages away from Americans.

Carlson’s perspective has brought a large audience to Fox. In May, for example, Carlson had almost 4.6 million viewers — likely including President Donald Trump. In June, Carlson urged Trump to narrow the visa-worker pipelines, and Trump is reportedly about to approve sweeping new limits that would directly impact T-Mobile and many other companies.

The federal data at MyVisaJobs.com shows that Sievert’s company is using the H-1B pipeline to import Asian workers into many jobs that could be advertised and then filled by Americans — including black Americans.

In 2018, the company asked for 409 foreign workers, at an average wage of $120,741, reported MyVisaJobs.

In 2019, the company asked for 429 H-1B workers, at an average wage of $128,526.

So far, in 2020, the company has asked for 190 foreign workers. Their titles include accounting manager, analyst, business intelligence, associate product manager, business analysis manager, data scientist, pricing manager, and product manager.

MyVisaJobs chart

(MyVisaJobs)

H-1B employees are contract workers, not immigrants. They can stay for six years, or longer if a company nominates them for green cards.

The MyVisaJobs chart only shows the H-1B workers that T-Mobile is directly seeking. Many additional H-1B visa workers are imported by Indian-run contractors for lease to Fortune 500 companies, such as T-Mobile.

Overall, U.S. companies employ roughly 1.3 million white-collar visa workers instead of American graduates. The huge population also allows subcontractors to use many illegal immigrants as gig workers for Fortune 500 firms.

The flood of foreign workers helps raise corporate stock values by dropping the nationwide price of professional skills, especially among subcontractors.

It also delivers a compliant and disposable white-collar labor force to the coastal executives at Fortune 500 companies and many healthcare companies. This gig worker labor force of modestly skilled workers minimizes the need for executives to hire and manage independent American professionals.

Nearly all of T-Mobile’s imported workers come from India. Many of India’s workers will work long hours at low wages in the hope of getting a huge deferred bonus of citizenship. The prize of citizenship means the Indians need not return to India and dramatically increases their value on India’s international marriage market.

India’s government strongly supports the H-1B program. The program helps keep a population of roughly 700,000 Indian workers in U.S. jobs, so allowing much money — and numerous other jobs — to be exported back to India. T-Mobile’s parent company has a division in India.

Amid the company’s use of H-1Bs, Sievert’s June 9 message seemed to promote more jobs and promotions for non-white Americans:

We are making significant changes.  We will bring more diverse talent and better representation of minorities into leadership roles through new programs and processes that improve how we hire, how we recognize and reward people, and how we mentor or develop our talent to grow their careers.  We are taking steps, such as our decision this week to ensure every job we fill and every promotion we make should include a diverse slate of candidates for the opportunity – and our high potential management and executive talent programs will include significantly increased participation by people of color.

…

We are also establishing programs to support Black businesses and minority communities across the country.  Much of this work is already underway as a result of the diversity partnership and Memorandum of Understanding we signed with six National Civil Rights organizations last year, including our commitment to fund their important work on behalf of all Americans with $25M in grants.  We recognize that we have an opportunity and the responsibility to take even more action – and we will.

The Sievert letter does not mention the option of opening up more jobs for Americans by reducing the hiring of visa workers.

T-Mobile executives hold leadership roles in at least two of the trade associations who protested in May against Trump’s draft plan to open jobs for Americans by slowing the inflow of visa workers. The two trade associations — the CTIA and the Consumer Technology Association told Trump:

We urge you to avoid outcomes, even for temporary periods, that restrict employment-authorization terms, conditions, or processing of L-1, H-1B, F-1, or H-4 [visa worker] nonimmigrants. Constraints on our human capital are likely to result in unintended consequences and may cause substantial economic uncertainty if we have to recalibrate our personnel based on country of birth.

Sievert has worked at many companies that use the visa-worker pipelines instead of hiring Americans.

In contrast, Carlson has repeatedly used his TV show to prod Trump towards curbs on the visa-worker programs used by T-Mobile and many other companies.

Numerous polls show the public strongly supports Trump’s jobs-for-Americans tilt, even as they also want to welcome most immigration.

 

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com.

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