Poll Shows Rising Fear of Job Losses to Visa Workers

Many Americans have already been replaced by H-1B visa workers, and one in five fear their own replacement, according to a simple poll of 1,004 white-collar workers.

The March survey was conducted by Howdy, a staffing firm that places Latin American professionals into roles needed by the growing number of sidelined American graduates. The firm reported:

So how many tech workers actually have coworkers on H1B visas? It turns out, most of them: 55% of the tech workers we surveyed have H1B coworkers; they comprise an average of 17% of staff. These tech workers noted that nearly 2 in 3 H1B visa holders occupy jobs formerly held by U.S. citizens; this might be why 1 in 5 tech workers fear they will be replaced by an H1B visa holder in the future.

“34% of tech companies are hiring more H1B visa holders, according to tech workers,” the report added.

The federal government is in the process of welcoming an additional 110,000 new H-1B workers, who will join the existing population of two million white-collar guest workers.

Companies are also importing visa workers to train them for jobs that will be outsourced to lower-wage countries, such as India. The Howdy survey noted:

Many companies also outsource staff, or hire workers abroad; 57% of tech workers surveyed have outsourced coworkers who represent about 44% of staff at their respective employers. Some companies avoid aligning time zones by hiring a bit closer to home: 65% engage in nearshoring, or hiring workers based in either Canada or Latin America.

“27% [of U.S. tech workers] worry their jobs will be outsourced internationally,” the survey noted.

All told, the survey suggests that half of the existing technology-related white-collar jobs sought by American graduates have been turned over to visa workers or sent to other countries.

Many of the visa workers are hired by small companies within the pyramid of subcontractors under major U.S. companies. “Of the H1B visa holders we surveyed, a shocking 57% said their immigration status had been threatened at some point in their workplace,” the Howdy survey said.

Prior polls also show growing concern by voters about the damage done by visa programs.

In October, a poll by Cygnal showed that a 44 percent plurality of likely voters said companies exploit the H-1B visa system. Just 18 percent say “definitely H-1B visas are essential for U.S. competitiveness,” says the poll of 1,500 likely general-election voters.

In March, a poll by pro-American groups showed 43 percent of Americans with college degrees “strongly” support the statement: “Immigration policy should serve the interests of American citizens,” rather than employers or investors.

However, U.S. professionals have not created a political force to protect their careers and families, said John Miano, a D.C.-based lawyer who has filed several lawsuits against the visa programs. “I think the word is starting to get out,” despite misleading coverage in establishment outlets, Miano told Breitbart News. But, he said, “On Twitter, it is non-stop, but you’re just basically getting people talking and not acting on the problem.”

A new lawsuit described how some of the subcontractor’s visa workers are abused, often by foreign-born managers who bring their foreign workplace cultures with them. The abuse is easy because Congress gave employers almost unlimited power over the visa-workers’ years-long climb to the immensely valuable prize of U.S. citizenship for the migrants and all of their descendants.

1 TXED Meesala Complaint by Breitbart News

Indian plaintiff Rishikesh Raj Meesala was hired by Progress Solutions Inc., based in India and Plano, Texas.

The company says it offers an “Ethical IT Staffing Service” for other companies seeking blocs of staff for tasks and contracts.

The lawsuit says:

Defendants own an IT staffing company. They recruited and hired Plaintiff. And then they successfully petitioned for him to join their team on an H-1B visa. Things looked up for Plaintiff. But Defendants then started demanding Plaintiff pay his own salary. Defendants also refused to provide Plaintiff pay stubs, which are necessary for H-1B holders to transfer to a different H-1B employer, unless Plaintiff paid them. Then, when Plaintiff pushed back, they threatened him with ICE, threatened his father, and continued to refuse to pay him. These acts constitute labor trafficking, forced labor, and document servitude are crimes … Progress’s … acts are unlawful and they’ve seriously hurt Plaintiff. Now Plaintiff seeks a jury to decide the damages he suffered.

…

By threatening to forgo payroll, Progress [was] implicitly threatening Rishi with [losing] his immigration status. If they didn’t run Rishi’s payroll, Rishi would not be able to maintain, extend, or transfer his H-1B [visa].

Rishi thus delivered approximately $8,800 in cash to Progress’s Plano office under threat of losing his immigration status.

“Progress has withheld wages from Rishi from February 1, 2025 to present … Defendants owe Rishi at least $97,248.94 in unpaid wages and coerced payments,” said the lawsuit, which was filed by S.C.-based Banias Law, in cooperation with Jay Palmer, founder of ProjectEradicate.com.

The H-1B and many other visa programs force U.S. white-collar professionals to compete in the labor market against foreign workers who pay kickbacks to their CEOs to get jobs in the hope of winning the citizen-funded prize of green cards and citizenship.

Sources show that many CEOs and C-Suite managers fire Americans before selling their jobs to kickback-paying visa workers. This kickback-filled black market for U.S. white-collar jobs has pushed millions of Americans out of their jobs since the 1990s, causing enormous damage to U.S. prosperity, productivity, security, and innovation.

The development of AI technology is supercharging this lucrative market in U.S. jobs by equipping foreign workers with tools to perform tasks previously handled by American professionals.

“So far this year, more than 70 tech companies have eliminated at least 40,000 jobs, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry,” the New York Times wrote on April 2, adding:

Block, the financial services company that owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, laid off 40 percent of its work force in February, or about 4,000 employees …  That decline is visible across the country, too. Nationwide, tech jobs declined by about 150,000 from 2022 through 2025.

So far, President Donald Trump has set minor curbs on various programs, mostly by raising the bar for companies that are importing foreign workers. For example, in September 2025, Trump touted a $100,000 for companies that import H-1B workers. But obvious loopholes ensured that only 85 companies had paid the fees by mid-February, according to a March 5 legal document submitted by the Department of Justice.

Since 1990, the federal government has allowed employers to import several million foreign graduates via many pathways, for supposedly temporary jobs. These visa workers use the H-1B, J-1, L-1, O-1, TN, H4, EB-2 NIW, B-1/B-2, OPT, and CPT pathways. Roughly 70,000 of the white-collar workers win green cards each year, often after a decade of workplace abuse.

That huge inflow has boosted profits and Wall Street values, but it has slashed white-collar Americans’ salaries, workplace rights, education opportunities, hiring chances, career promotions, and family formation.

The inflow has also damaged workplace competency, workday productivity, social inequality, business innovation, marketplace pressure for more trade exports, regulatory compliance, and national security.

The inflow has also supercharged the ability of Indian-born Fortune 500 managers and US-born CEOs to legally transfer huge numbers of U.S. professional jobs to India’s subordinated and cheap workforce.