The UC San Francisco medical center next month will begin replacing well-paid American IT workers with low-wage immigrants to cut costs, becoming the first public university to ship U.S. tech jobs offshore under the H-1B visa law, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The 97 IT workers, whose contracts with UCSF will be severed Feb. 28, have been ordered in the meantime to train their replacements, who are employees of the India-based IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), whose San Jose district includes much of Silicon Valley, said the move by UC undercuts its duty of preparing students who are working to join the tech industry.
"UC is training software engineers at the same time they’re outsourcing their own software engineers," Lofgren told the Times. "What message are they sending their own students?"
H-1B visas were initially created to allow American companies to hire highly specialized foreign workers in temporary positions. Outsourcing firms have since penetrated the program to replace U.S. workers with low-cost immigrants, despite federal law mandating that the visas can’t "adversely affect the wages and working conditions" of Americans.