CHIPS Act Uses Taxpayer Money to Hire Foreign Workers

[rangerrebew]

CHIPS Act Uses Taxpayer Money to Hire Foreign Workers
 
PUBLISHED:  Tue, SEP 12th 2023 @ 1:37 pm EDT  by  Jared Culver

The CHIPS Act was hailed as bringing the vitally important semiconductor industry to the United States. Part of the benefit sold to taxpayers footing the bill on this $50 billion+ investment was that it would create jobs for Americans. While that sounds like a good bargain, the industries gaining tax credits and Federal grants have started singing the old “labor shortage” tune. That song never fails to have the same chorus of “needing” to import more foreign labor. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which is constructing a plant in Arizona with up to $15 billion in American taxpayer support, is seeking to import Taiwanese workers because of a supposed labor shortage in Arizona.

Fortunately, Arizona workers are fighting back. From the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council President:

“But there’s a loophole in the CHIPS Act. The language of the CHIPS Act ensures that these projects will be operated by American workers, but it does not require that the facilities will be built by American workers. Last month, TSMC announced that it is bringing more than 500 Taiwanese construction workers to build the facilities. They are justifying this request by claiming that somehow Arizona workers lack the training, skills and experience needed to build the facility. It’s simply not true.”

Could it be that employers are lying about a labor shortage to import cheaper foreign labor? Arizona workers answer in the affirmative:

https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/chips-act-uses-taxpayer-money-hire-foreign-workers

[Kamaji]

Uhh, building a semiconductor chip factory that will produce chips with the current single-digit nm transistor spacing takes something more than the yobbos who can sling concrete, weld up steel girders, and hammer in wood 2x4s.

And since the U.S. doesn't currently have a robust home-grown chip fab industry - it was outsourced to Taiwan decades ago - I rather doubt that there are a sufficient number of construction workers in the U.S. who have the skills necessary to do the precise, painstaking work of building a chip fab.