The New York Times is sympathizing with foreign college graduates who use the controversial H-1B program to grab white-collar jobs needed by American graduates.
“These highly skilled, highly educated foreign workers have been documenting the challenges of trying to build a career in the U.S.,” the accompanying video said.
“If I don’t find a job, I have to leave the country,” an Indian science graduate named Ananya Joshi told the camera.
“I sent out 907 applications,” said a Chinese marketing graduate named Haina, who was laid off from a job in September 2025.
“I want to use my talents to change the world,” said a Taiwanese graduate, Wen-Hsing Huang. He got hired by Amazon.
The breezy articles come amid mass layoffs of U.S. graduates who are being fired by tech companies, including Oracle, a California-based database company. The companies are also sending many of the jobs to low-wage India.
The New York Post wrote on April 2:
As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didn’t know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.
…
“If this doesn’t make you angry, maybe you need to read some heartfelt posts on LinkedIn from Oracle employees who are U.S. citizens and have been laid off after working at Oracle for years,” [one Oracle employee] wrote.
“The IT industry is in a meltdown,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers. “With the Oracle announcement, we’re looking at 110,000 to 115,000 tech-job cuts… We need an employment visa moratorium now,” he said, adding:
This [issue] is a $100 bill in the gutter [waiting] for any candidate, anyone in office: If you’re in office and you want to make sure you get reelected, pick up this $100 bill… The American public sees it’s literally hitting them in the face and the pocketbook, they’re seeing their kids graduate after investing heavily in their kids, yet both students and parents getting degrees that can’t deliver a decent-paying job in their field. This is crazy.
Polls show rising public opposition to the visa-worker programs.
The New York Times article also failed to mention that the administration is handing out visas to a flood of 115,000 new H-1B workers, and will soon give away at least 200,000 work permits via the “Optional Practical Training” program for foreign graduates of U.S. universities. This labor-force giveaway to investors is happening even as agencies are trying to enforce curbs on the hiring of foreign graduates.
Overall, U.S. companies employ at least 2 million foreign workers who are not immigrants, even as a huge number of U.S. graduates are either unemployed or sidelined into low-wage jobs.
“If there’s a candidate running for office for the first time, and they’re not talking about how they’re going to get rid of H-1B and OPT, we should turn our backs,” Lynn said.
The New York Times article, however, buries the good news for Americans: two of the three featured foreign graduates have left the United States and the third graduate is still unemployed.
“The [government] signals are pretty clear at this point,” said Haina. “It’s they want to make this H-1B [program] as risky and also harder.”
“I woke up every morning with this knot in my stomach because my entire life depended on the [H-1B] policy I couldn’t control,” said the Taiwanese graduate who was fired by Amazon and has gone back to his home country. “The United States seems not very welcoming [to] immigrants [who want] to contribute to this country.”
“Staying in the United States is no longer the only way to achieve my American dream,” he said.
The Indian graduate migrated to Germany in search of a job. “I think I left at a good time because there would have been more stress — I would have been stuck in a loop.”
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