MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA — Sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s sweeping new H-1B visa fraud crackdown, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a dire warning to shareholders on Thursday, cautioning that if the federal government successfully halts the influx of unqualified, underpaid foreign labor, the tech giant may be forced to do the unthinkable and hire a United States citizen.
“This aggressive interference from the Department of Labor threatens the very foundation of our business model,” a visibly shaken Pichai said during an emergency press conference. “If we are legally prevented from flying in desperate, incompetent, undocumented scammers who will code for 80 hours a week under the constant, looming threat of deportation, we may have no choice but to hire an American engineering graduate who expects health insurance, weekends off, and worst of all, a living wage.
Industry experts warn that replacing captive visa workers with competent Americans could completely destroy the tech industry’s core business model, such as hiring people who might actually fix the software bugs instead of just copy-pasting from StackOverflow, slapping a bandage on the codebase, and billing the client for another 4,000 hours.
At publishing time, Google successfully lobbied regulators to lower the H-1B “specialized talent” requirement to applicants who can simply prove they know what a mouse is and to promise not to use it as a coaster.
