Another Gold Rush is underway in Silicon Valley. An entire generation has been encouraged to learn to code with the same earnestness as young Americans were once encouraged to “go West” in search of the precious metal. Find the right startup and you can become a billionaire too.

Yet the shine is fading. More and more tech workers are rebelling against the use of cheap foreign labor that undercuts them. A recent investigation by RealClearInvestigations found that tech companies are increasingly using the H-1B visa program to replace American employees with lower-wage foreign workers. The article found that layoffs are happening alongside growing political pressure for proponents of the visa.

This taps into a broader problem which has allowed giant tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google to use a seemingly unlimited pool of cheap foreign labor. In the 10 years between 2015 and 2025, the number of approved H-1B visas a year has risen from 275,317 to over 400,000. Despite being legally required to use this visa group only to fill jobs for which qualified Americans couldn’t be found, in practice tech companies have fired tens of thousands of US workers while expanding the size of their H-1B visa workforces.

The most politically salient feature of this scheme is the way it undercuts the wages and jobs of US citizens. It is on behalf of the displaced American workers that the loudest cries against the H-1B have been raised. Even as the Trump administration has sought to expand other guest worker programs, it has made some initial moves to curb the controversial visa scheme — the government now requires tech employers to pay a $100,000 fee per new application. Tech companies have largely been able to work around this requirement by recruiting foreign students directly out of US universities, who are exempt from the fees. Friday’s announcement that foreign visa holders, including H-1B holders, must leave the country to apply for a Green Card could ironically keep more foreign tech workers permanently trapped on H-1B visa status, and thus dependent on their tech employers.

Yet for all of Donald Trump’s struggles to address anger without offending the tech oligarchy, Democrats don’t seem to have a plan either. There is an understandable concern that the debate slides too easily into overt bigotry. Not wishing to be associated with the perception of xenophobia leaves many on the Left uncomfortable discussing the underlying labor issues. Too many Democrats also wish to avoid angering the tech titans on whom they rely for donor support and even ideological direction.

Despite Democrats’ discomfort, the H-1B issue is clearly not going away. A generation that was told careers in the tech industry were their future is finding out there are no jobs left for them. This concern is likely to become especially pronounced among young US-born African and Latino Americans who may have otherwise benefited from efforts, including by the tech industry itself, to “diversify” the workforce. Despite Latino children making up nearly 40% of the K-12 students in Bay Area schools, Latinos make up barely 3% of the Silicon Valley tech workforce.

What is the Left’s solution? The potential for a tech workers union seems promising, especially as these employees realize they are permanent wage laborers rather than future startup founders. Yet such unionization efforts will inevitably have to reckon with the H-1B question as well. Will these workers join the union or will they be used to break it? Overcoming the vulnerability of people on H-1B visas to organize them alongside American tech employees is necessary but difficult. The Left should advocate for making it harder to hire foreign workers, but also for extending them equal working rights while they are here.

For now, those coming to America on H-1B visas are cheap to hire and easy to fire. As AI comes for all the tech jobs, there may be one final advantage for foreign workers: they can simply be deported after the mass layoffs and won’t stay in the country to offer an opposition. Maybe the tech barons have thought this through. Eventually, they may let the growing wave of anger at the industry crash down on their former employees who have come through this foreign visa program, just as soon as AI makes all tech workers redundant. They provide a convenient scapegoat, after all. It can get ugly in California when a Gold Rush ends.

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Antonio De Loera-Brust is the communications director for the United Farm Workers. Previously, he served as a special assistant to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

@AntonioDeLoeraB

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