Voters Scoff as Apple’s Tim Cook Declares ‘Deeply Disappointed’ with H-1B Visa Worker Halt

Apple's bombshell and the trillion-dollar question (AFP)
AFP
Neil Munro

Apple CEO Tim Cook says he is “deeply disappointed” with President Donald Trump’s June 22 decision to shut down some of the visa worker pipelines that prevent Americans from getting jobs at Silicon Valley tech companies.

“Deeply disappointed by this proclamation,” Cook said June 23. “Like Apple, this nation of immigrants has always found strength in our diversity, and hope in the enduring promise of the American Dream. There is no new prosperity without both.”

But America’s voters jeered and scoffed at Cook’s high-minded defense of the pipelines, which allow tech leaders to fill up their companies with blocs of compliant, controllable, and silent foreign workers instead of independent and free-speaking American professionals.

The responses echo the poll-tested public support for Trump’s hire American-first agenda, which is far more popular than the Cold War-era claim that Americans’ homeland is somehow a “Nation of Immigrants.”

Apple’s most recent hiring report shows how the company’s hiring of Asian visa workers is squeezing out Americans.

Asians filled 35 percent of technical jobs in 2018, up from 23 percent in 2014. That left 17 percent of technical jobs to non-white minorities and just 40 percent of jobs to white tech graduates. In 2014, 54 percent of technical jobs were held by whites, 15 percent by non-white minorities, and eight percent were not identified.

Very few visa workers are hired for lower-wage retail jobs, ensuring that blacks and Latinos hold 36 percent of the slots in 2018. American Asians hold eight percent, and U.S. whites hold 51 percent. In 2014, whites had 59 percent of the jobs and non-white minorities, six percent to Asians, 27 percent went to non-white, non-Asian minorities, six percent to Asians, and eight percent were unidentified.

A website, MyVisaJobs.com, shows Apple’s massive H-1B hiring of Chinese and Indian tech workers:

MyVisaJobs.com

This corporate hiring of foreign workers has shifted the demographics of California and many other states. For example, 65 percent of Silicon Valley jobs in software, computer, or math are foreign-born, according to the 2020 Silicon Valley Index. This wave of foreign workers is pushing many American graduates aside and is working its way into corporate leadership.

Apple also hires many H-1B workers via staffing companies as a “Secondary Entity Business Name.”

Commenters praised Trump for overruling his pro-Apple advisers, including one adviser who reportedly urged Trump in April to not curb the inflow of H-1Bs, saying, “Tim Cook won’t like this, Mr. President.”

Commenters also noted that Cook promotes the “Black Lives Matter” upsurge but uses the pipelines to hire Asians instead of black Americans:

The welcome given to Cook mirrors the popular reaction to other CEOs and companies that have announced opposition to Trump’s policy.

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

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