Sold Out begins with a meeting in October 2014. At that meeting Disney executives told several hundred technology workers that they were going to be laid off and replaced by lower paid workers from India who had H-1B visas. However, they were not going to be “laid off” (that is to say, fired) until they trained their replacements. If they refused to train their replacements, they would be denied severance pay.
Following this bloodletting Disney CEO Bob Iger lobbied in Washington for more H-1B visas, telling Congress that Disney was not replacing permanent employees with holders of H-1B visas.
After discussing Disney, Sold Out describes Jennifer Wedel who asked President Obama, “Hi, Mr. President. My husband has an engineering degree with over ten years of experience, and he was laid off three year and has yet to find a permanent job in his field. My question to you is why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?”
President Obama danced away from that question, mouthing inanities about “a huge demand around the country for engineers.”
The H-1B visa program was begun in 1990 to alleviate a presumed shortage of IT workers. That shortage does not exist. If it did, Disney would not have needed to fire hundreds of permanent IT workers. Mr. Wedel would have easily found another engineering job. Keep in mind that the vast majority of those people were performing well at their jobs.
Sold Out informs us that in July 2014 the US Census Bureau reported “74 percent of those who have a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are not employed in STEM occupations.”
In a letter that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2015 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.,Ala.) Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest wrote, “About 35 percent of science students, 55 percent of technology students, 20 percent of engineering students and 30 percent of math students who recently graduated are now working in jobs that don’t require any four-year college degree. As further proof of no shortage, wages in the profitable IT industry have been largely flat for more than a decade.”
An IT graduate who does not get an IT position within a year of graduation will almost certainly not get one. IT employers want IT employees with the latest skills. They suspect that IT graduates who have been away from the field have forgotten some of what they have learned. They also suspect that if they were worth anything they would have been hired by someone else.
Even IT graduates who do get jobs become less marketable after they become forty years old. They are more likely to be laid off. They are less likely to find another IT job. If they get one they will almost certainly be paid less than they were in their previous job. Michelle Malkin and John Miano write, “At a tech conference in 2007 in which he advised companies not to hire workers over thirty, baby-faced Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbery infamously bragged: ‘Young people are just smarter’.”
That is sufficient proof that the presumed shortage of American IT workers, that is used to justify the H-1B visa program, does not exist. When there is a shortage of people with certain skills, those people are not treated this way.
Bill Gates and the Heritage Foundation have claimed that each H-1B visa creates five jobs for American citizens.
Michelle Malkin and John Miano respond, “Anyone can write a study. For a study to have any value, its results must be reproducible. A reader should be able to understand what the author did and other researchers should be able to get the same results…
“Between 2001 and 2013, the average yearly job growth in the US has been 540,000. The average new number of H-1B visas has been 118,000 a year…If each H-1B visa creates five additional jobs, it would H-1B visas are responsible for more than 100 percent of job creation in the US economy – 590,000 jobs a year.”
Sold Out is a better book than it might have been. Michelle Malkin is a Republican commentator. She could have absolved the Republican Party and the corporate establishment of responsibility for the scandal of H-1B visas, and only blamed them on Democratic politicians and “big government.”
Michelle Malkin has too much integrity to do this. She writes, “the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama sneakily expanded the foreign worker supply by administrative fiat.” She blames “the Big Government/Big Business alliances” for “harming our country.”
This is well to keep in mind. Because the United States has become politically polarized many Americans think in terms of Our Team vs. Their Team, and to think that everyone on Our Team has our best interests at heart.
Michelle Malkin points out that this is not always true. Of the primary candidates for the 2016 presidential election the only two who are not committed to increasing the number of H-1B visas are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Even they do not have clean records on the issue. Donald Trump’s companies have imported over one thousand guest workers, including 250 foreign models on H-1B visas. Donald Trump has said, “I want talented people to come into this country – to work hard and to become citizens. Silicon Valley needs engineers, etc.”
Bernie Sanders has spoken out against H-1B abuses. He protested against a bill that would greatly increase the number of H-1B visas. Then he voted in favor of it anyway.
This is typical for politicians on both sides of the isle. They loudly complain about the decline in middle class jobs and incomes. Then they quietly advance a policy that contributes to these declines.
Michelle Malkin and John Miano do not condemn foreigners who get H-1B visas. They are making the best use of the bad hand life dealt them when they were born in poor countries. Michelle Malkin and John Miano condemn the IT executives and politicians who exploit the poverty of H-1B visa holders by contributing to that of American citizens. Those who get H-1B visas are usually poorly paid and are often badly treated. If they complain about their employers they can be sent back to their countries.
One can understand why Republican politicians like the H-1B visa program. By enabling corporate executives to reduce IT salaries, H-1B visas raise profits for IT firms. Moreover, while immigrants usually vote Democrat, H-1B visa holders cannot vote.
Democrats like to think about the Statue of Liberty, “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and all that. Nevertheless, the main reason for Democrat treachery is that IT executives make generous contributions to politicians of both parties if they vote for more H-1B visas.
Sold Out could have been a better book than it is. The book emphasizes how H-1B visas harm “America’s best and brightest workers.” Many Americans may think IT workers are too bright by half, and overpaid. The authors of this book should have explained how those in other professions and in skilled trades are also threatened by the ability of employers to import lower paid temp workers from low wage countries to take their jobs.
Moreover, by emphasizing how Democrat and Republican politicians are promoting H-1B visas Michelle Malkin and John Miano’s book may induce political cynicism. A person who is threatened by the H-1B visa program may conclude that politics is incurably corrupt, and stop voting.
Retreating from politics will not put an end to H-1B visas. The program will expand until it becomes a salient issue for most Americans, and unpopular. Politicians need to be asked about their stand on this.
Michelle Malkin and John Miano do give Sen. Jeff Sessions the praise he deserves. They should have given him more attention, and devoted more notice to other politicians who have the integrity to oppose H-1B visas, even at the price of not getting contributions from IT corporations.
Finally, the book is repetitious and longer than it needs to be. The authors add detail after detail of American employees whose lives have been damaged by H-1B visas and politicians who have contributed to the damage. They also spend too much time describing programs that are similar to the H-1B visa program.
Michelle Malkin and John Miano should have restricted themselves to several of the more lurid stories of corporate and political malfeasance. The book should have had more statistics and quotes from credible sources to demonstrate that there is no shortage of American STEM workers, only a shortage of STEM employers who will train those with good backgrounds into their specific technologies. The big picture of this scandal is easy to see and understand: H-1B visas and similar programs benefit IT employers; they jeopardize the economic interests of American citizens with STEM education and experience; there is no shortage of those American citizens.
What about the rest of the US population? Don’t Americans benefit from less expensive advances in technology? I am not typing these words using a typewriter, but a personal computer, using technology designed at least in part by foreigners with H-1B visas.
That is a morally complex issue that merits more thought and discussion than it is usually given. Computer technology makes possible the automation and off shoring that has contributed to stagnant and declining incomes for most Americans.
In my first job as a computer programmer, I coded two COBOL programs that enabled my company to fire four clerical workers. I was disturbed to learn the result of my work. My boss was pleased. I could not have saved their jobs. If I had refused to code those programs, my boss would have fired me, replaced me in two weeks, and coded the programs himself.
Let me end with a poem inspired by Martin Niemoller:
First they fired the factory workers. I was not a factory worker, so I did not protest.
Then they fired the clerical workers. I was not a clerical worker, so I did not protest.
When they fired the IT workers, there was no one left to protest. .
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![Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers by [Michelle Malkin, John Miano]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51evwrK1IAL._SY346_.jpg)
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 17, 2016
MUST READ - I ASK ANYONE How would you like to loose your job and be told to train your guest worker replacement?
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 18, 2015Top reviews from other countries
Alexander Glauberzon
How corrupt big business and corrupt globalism destroying IT industry
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 6, 2019Barry Ceminchuk
How tech people's jobs are being affected and sold out
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 2, 2015
