“Just a month after Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to cut 12,000 jobs around the world in January, the company filed applications for H1B visas to hire software engineers, analytical consultants, user experience researchers and other roles from outside the United States”
Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Zoom, Salesforce and Palantir applied for thousands of H1B visas this year, per Labor Department data. Amazon cut 27,000 jobs across two rounds. Microsoft cut 10,000 and promised to keep hiring in “key strategic areas.” Layoffs and visa filings come out of the same spreadsheet, and the workers on H1Bs got cut too.