Big tech’s reliance on foreign workers is leaving Black and Latino Americans behind

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Jonette Christian of Holden is a founder of Mainers For Sensible Immigration Policy.

Technology is transforming our future, creating inconceivable wealth, employing more than 12 million workers , and adding 200,000 good paying jobs a year. But who gets the jobs and who doesn’t?

According to The Seattle Times , 71 percent of the tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign born, and 40 percent in Seattle. Many are here on guest worker visas provided by Congress. And the numbers have steadily increased.

And who doesn’t get the jobs? According to a recent NAACP report , “State of Tech Diversity: The Black Tech Ecosystem,” Blacks and Latinos in America aren’t getting tech jobs. Black talent constitutes 13 percent of the U.S. workforce and 8.6 percent of STEM graduates, but only 3.6 percent of technical workers, leading Ivory Toldson, director of innovation and research strategy at the NAACP to conclude : “Diversity in tech is a […]

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