Tesla, which has come under repeated fire due to CEO Elon Musk's political antics and its quality control issues, has been now slapped with a lawsuit that alleges that the company prefers hiring visa holding immigrants over American citizens in order to save money, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit claims that Tesla relies heavily on workers who hold the H-1B visa, which grants temporary employment for specialized technical jobs, and that workers who have been recently laid off from the electric vehicle company are disproportionally Americans.
Last year, Tesla let go of more than 6,000 workers in its American operations while hiring 1,355 people who hold visas, Reuters reports.
A software engineer and human resources specialist brought the lawsuit against Tesla after they were rebuffed from seeking employment that they believed went to visa holders.
This lawsuit comes at a rather delicate time for the tech industry, Tesla, and Musk.
There's an incredible amount of controversy in America about immigrants, who are demonized for taking away jobs from Americans or committing crimes. All are issues that President Donald Trump ran on in his successful 2024 campaign. Musk — himself an immigrant from South Africa — isn't above attacking other immigrants as well, giving the allegations a grim smack of hypocrisy.
He's not terribly consistent on that point, though. Musk came to America to seek his fortune on an H-1B visa, which he's praised at times, drawing ire from critics such as Trump's longtime adviser Steve Bannon, who called Musk an illegal alien and advocated stripping him of his government contracts.
But all that anti-immigrant sentiment bumps up against the American tech industry's need for top flight talent and its race against AI companies and labs in China, which has thrown its doors open to young STEM graduates and professionals.
And Tesla seems like they need all the help it can get, because its robotaxis are getting into accidents and it's had to settle lawsuits over crashes involving its Autopilot.
Needless to say, this lawsuit surely adds fuel to the fire.
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