At the end of business Friday nearly 200 IT workers at Chicago’s Abbott Laboratories left there for the last time as their positions were terminated by Abbott Labs and each of them was immediately replaced by cheaper foreign workers using the H1B visa program(and others).

Conservative author and columnist Michelle Malkin held a protest/wake/awakening Friday evening at a restaurant just feet away from Abbott Labs to bring attention to the plight of those 200 now jobless Americans and the larger issue of silicon Valley tech firms, insurance companies, banks, and even some state governments using the immigration visa system and “guest workers” and abusing it by deliberately getting rid of highly skilled, experienced Americans, who cost more to employ, in favor of cheaper, (and I say)inferior, labor from places like India.

One of Abbott’s now former employees Marco came to the event and spoke to me about what happened to him and his co-workers, including how Abbott Labs had him and others TRAIN the foreign workers who were going to replace them.

Unlike other Abbott Lab employees Marco refused to sign a severance agreement that included a clause that virtually eliminates the free speech rights of those who signed it to speak out about what Abbott Labs just did to them and the abuses Abbott and other companies are undertaking of the visa system at the expense of American workers.

Tens of thousands of American workers in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and mathematics field have lost their jobs in recent years/decades as American companies ditch them in favor of foreign workers, who they can pay substantially less.

cross posted from USofArn.com