McDonals hires foreign H1-Bs, fires 70 American accounting

Posted: Sep 21, 2016

migrants to replace professionals. The outsourcing deal was revealed when McDonalds sought federal taxpayers’ funds to compensate the 70 fired Americans. But American companies are now trying to outsource more varieties of jobs, including accounting, healthcare and design jobs. For example, American universities have hired H-1Bs for 100,000 prestigious jobs, including professors, lecturers, doctors, therapists, scientists and researchers. Engineering giant Caterpillar continues to hire H-1B workers in Illinois as it fires hundreds of American engineers and other white-collar workers, DeLoitte and other U.S. accounting firms have asked for more than 20,000 H-1B visas to replace American business-school graduates. Now the various immigrants and guest workers are moving up the wage scale from blue-collar jobs towards the white-collar jobs that provide some sense of financial stability in a fast changing economy Ohio, for example, is now home to roughly 13,000 H-1Bs, of which roughly 4,000 are employed at universities which can get an unlimited number of “cap exempt” H-1B visas. The H-1Bs are being sought to work in Ohio as designers and business forecasters at Abercrombie & Fitch, credit analysts at JP Morgan, accountants at Accenture, scientists at Abbott Laboratories, researchers at Ohio State University, and also as therapists, software programmers and business analysts at many other firms. The flood of skilled and unskilled immigrants has been great for Ohio employers, including universities and major companies like McDonalds. They’re now able to outsource more work, or hired more lower wage foreign workers in place of middle-age Americans, who seek decent wages to cover the cost of American education, housing, families and a normal American lifestyle. The inflow is also good for merchants who sell more food, lodging, autos, and much else, including online-advertising, to the imported customers. That’s especially beneficial to shareholders because many of those sales are funded by ordinary Americans’ taxes, via welfare programs that are used extensively by lower-skilled immigrants. The inflow has been good for the state and for the Chamber of Commerce, as more taxpayers and companies pay taxes to the state and dues to the Chamber. The extra people have increased the size of the state’s economy and government revenue, which grew from $25 billion in 2010 at the depth of the recession, up to $28.5 billion in 2015. But the extra labor has shifted wages and opportunities away from Ohioans, including both the white-collar salary earners at McDonalds and the blue-collar wage earners in low skill jobs. Americans want to like immigrants, and they want to like immigration in general, but they’re growing more worried that it is an economic threat to them and their children. For companies, and now increasingly for voters, immigration “is all about the bottom line,” said Newsome. ;