I’ve been in the industry since the late 90’s, right before the H1B volumes really spiked. I worked with a number of black people, and my hiring class consisted

I’ve been in the industry since the late 90’s, right before the H1B volumes really spiked. I worked with a number of black people, and my hiring class consisted of a number of black engineers from historically black colleges. Fast forward 10 years, and cost savings forced a deep round of layoffs and offshoring. The black engineers were hit disproportionately. The current team’s makeup consists heavily of H1Bs. Those black engineers haven’t all returned to STEM. I’ve transitioned through many roles in my careers, and remained very interested in this topic, so I notice the black makeup of each company. In St Louis, a city with about 50% black population, I consulted on a few projects. These companies employed a few African Americans, as security guards, but the engineers were about 50% white and 50% Indian. In Florida, I consulted on another project. Every black engineer had the accent of a Caribbean native or African native. Judging by the accents, there were no American born black engineers. I keep wondering if the H1Bs have out competed the black new college graduates, or if they’re simply not being given a chance at the jobs being filled by H1Bs. Other companies have huge Infosys, TCS consulting presence, and those new engineering roles are filled without true competition from American workers, but doled out to new H1Bs. I continue to think that an additional yearly salary tax should be levied on any H1B. This forces the employers to be financially aligned with employing US citizens. Ideally those taxes should for for STEM scholarships for the poor, increasing the US pool of these supposedly in demand engineers.