Apple discriminated against US citizens in hiring, DOJ says

Reading into the press release, there is a distinction that probably escapes most native citizens here: they are talking about EB2 visa, not H1B. PERM certification is not the same labor certification done in H1B.

PERM is a much more rigorous and demanding process and it costs a lot more money than anything related to H1B. The reason is because it leads to a green card, not just a work permit. Often, it requires an advance degree and higher qualification than H1B too, PhDs or experienced masters. The money is paid upfront and USCIS then look into it and approves PERM on a case by case basis often taking a year or more. Then when the PERM passes, the applicant can finally get on the green card backlog and wait a few more years, or a decade if you were born in the wrong place...

This is to say the quality of applicants here is very high and Apple actually felt it was worth it to invest tens of thousands of dollars on each of them just for a green card gamble, which the employee can get then quit Apple immediately after and nothing can be done to them because they are now a permanent resident. No such thing as wage depression or abuse at this point because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American once they have EB2.

This.

If the PERM process at Apple is anything like what I saw at Facebook a couple of years ago, then all these “applicants” are actually people already working at the company on non-immigrant visas whom the company wants to retain.

There is no reason to assume that they’re being paid any less than others at Apple. They’re already in the country and have been doing the work for years. Why not give them a path to a green card? Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

I’ll admit that I’m biased because I was in this process at one point. But the notion that I was taking the job of a native-born American was ridiculous because I had been doing the job in London before. So if anything, I brought a UK job to USA. And to turn that into a green card, the company would have to advertise the job on their website. It makes no sense.

If the PERM process at Apple is anything like what I saw at Facebook a couple of years ago, then all these “applicants” are actually people already working at the company on non-immigrant visas whom the company wants to retain.

Indeed. I really doubt Apple prefers foreigners in their hiring (it's a rather significant hassle to bring somebody in). If anything, citizens have some edge.

But once an immigrant has been hired, the PERM process essentially would require trying to hire for that position again, and employers (not just Apple) are anything but motivated to replace an experienced and qualified employee with several years' experience at the company with an untested new hire, so they treat this process as a Kabuki performance.

How naive.

If anything, citizens have some edge.

Citizens have also more rights and companies love to have these clause that make you get your head down and work no questions asked - which makes conditions generally worse for everyone else.

The solution here is to increase and qualify the local workforce, and at the same time make the bar even higher for those from outside, starting from sanctioned countries.

How naive.

All I have to go on is 20+ years of employment at Apple, including several years as a H1B and Green Card holder. Can't possibly compete with your sincerely held beliefs.

Citizens have also more rights and companies love to have these clause that make you get your head down and work no questions asked

This is undoubtedly the case for some H1B employers, but Apple is not a body shop style operation. Firings are extremely rare, H1Bs and citizens work side by side, and I have never seen the former more hesitant to speak up than the latter.

You might want to entertain the thought that Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, or Betrand Serlet were not really hired for their pliability, but because they were genuinely qualified.

The solution here is to increase and qualify the local workforce

That would definitely be helpful. But the trend seems to go the other way, with it being fashionable for opinion leaders to tell people to forego college, and education becoming more and more of a luxury.

and at the same time make the bar even higher for those from outside

… forcing companies who prefer to hire the best qualified candidates over those with the "right" passport to shift their development activities elsewhere.

Its naive to think expanding the labor pool wouldnt reduce labor costs. Its supply and demand/economics 101. And obviously they (and every other company) is going to complain they cant fill positions locally in order to gain access to this cheaper pool.

If you're posting something is econ 101 you're probably wrong, and you're especially wrong if you claim adding people increases supply but not demand. People ARE demand.

Labor economists don't use "econ 101", and importantly they prefer empirical evidence over theory.

What a ridiculous take. There are limited job openings and thats a constant for any company (thats demand). Then there are people to fill those positions (thats supply). You shift the demand/supply balance by expanding the supply pool. This is an extremely simple concept that you've somehow made complicated for yourself.

People are not damand, I have no idea what that even means in the relevant context.

"I thought that Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, or Betrand Serlet were not really hired for their pliability but because they were genuinely qualified"

You lost me at this point. Many more qualified less pliable candidates exist but neither are the reason for their hiring.

In general the most qualified person rarely gets the position. The easiest to bend is usually what power seeks.

What's with people in this thread spouting absolutes as if they aren't obviously full of obvious mistakes and rebuttals?

"Power" also seeks competence. There's no one aspect that is sought is enough to to drown out all the others when hiring, at least not without an outside force requiring it.

Do employers want employees that are easy to deal with? Obviously. Is that more important then skill and ability? It depends not only on the employer, but also probably the job being hired for, but nobody wants to hire an unqualified candidate over a qualified one.

What's with people in this thread spouting absolutes as if they aren't obviously full of obvious mistakes and rebuttals?

Part of being a Marxist (parent comment) or an anti-immigrationist (grandparent comment) is that you're required to believe any statement anyone makes that has the right words in it. Even though you have no evidence for them.

starting from sanctioned countries.

Is FAANG hiring a lot of people from Cuba, North Korea or Iran?

Although Iranians are pretty good at tech and I know a sr. distinguished Iranian engineer at Apple. That's even better than distinguished! Can't beat that.

I can't recall ever having met a Cuban or North Korean engineer at Apple. But I've worked with some outstanding Iranian engineers. They did not strike me as particularly likely to spy for their country…

If anything, these are small scale…

I’m more talking about the wholesale scale from other dictatorship countries, under export control restrictions.

I highly doubt it’s a top-down decision to prefer foreign applicants at Apple. But that said, it’s common in FAANG to find scenarios where a manager is of a certain background, and 90% of the people under just happen to be of the same background, and nobody says anything.

That's very common with one or two specific demographic, but not all that common with most others. I'll refrain from naming them, but it's widely known i suppose.

I can think of three demographics, one of which, of course, is Americans themselves.

Why not give them a path to a green card?

Because it's illegal to (positively) discriminate for these people and shield them from competing with American citizens and GC-holders for jobs.

Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

As Apple just found out: creating a fake position to end-run immigration law is illegal.

I think the point is that immigration law should be changed so companies don't have to jump through hoops like this.

I too believe there has to be reform, but I also believe this is Apple being lazy/doing this for convenience.

If the individuals are more skilled than citizens, the Apple should have been prepared to open the interviews for those jobs to everyone (including citizens and permanent residents), selected the (person they knew to have been) the best and gotten the paperwork in order. The subterfuge would be completely unnecessary if they applied under the correct visa class and skills of those involved are as advertised.

There is no such thing as correct class. Broadly speaking, there are temporary workers who can eventually become permanent residents. And almost everyone needs to go through the same process which involves this PERM business. And everyone needs to participate in this charade of hiring someone once, then pretending that they don't have the employee, and then emerging victorious by putting out an ad that only that person satisfies. The competition and interviews already happened when the person was first hired.

Broadly speaking, there are temporary workers who can eventually become permanent residents.

The laws governing immigration areveryspecific about the distinctions between visa classes and the requirements for each class- and the devil is in the details.

The competition and interviews already happened when the person was first hired.

Perhaps, but that is your and Apple's (tacit) opinions. The government of the United States disagrees, and Apple just paid $25 million dollars to avoid getting this issue in front of a judge.

The difference in perspective, AFAICT, is you think a GC is a reward for getting a job after besting others (including citizens) in interviews. The government's contention is that the bar is higher: PERM is for jobs no American citizen or permanent resident are able and willing to do[1]. There are separate visa classes for being merely good, and being irreplaceable. Pretending that a candidate who is in the former group belongs to the latter by posting jobs on a noticeboard in an unlit basement without stairs is dishonest.

1. "The DOL must certify to the USCIS that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment"

This horse and pony show is a farce, most of us agree. But the fact is, if you don't dangle this GC reward, much fewer people would come to the US for work and study. The "irreplaceable" term is vague enough that if you strictly enforce it, it would effectively shut down this class of visa. Ask yourself this: how many people in your department would be 100% sure to keep their position if their job is offered up to the public again?

Some would welcome the reduced influx of immigrants. But in the long term, it would cripple the US. If an individual can convince a company to sponsor them, they are already highly qualified and productive to society. If you deny even these people from immigrating here, then who would you let in? You turn them away and China or the EU would gladly take them. Meanwhile, you lose a significant portion of your workforce that contribute tax without ever withdrawing from it and a lot of research and development at the PhD and master levels done at minimum wages.

The current situation benefits the US a lot. There is a reason why they are hesitating to make any big reform. The US is having the chance to exploit the world's best and brightest all for a few pieces of paper a year. At most there are 140K permanent residents being made each year via this route. It is insignificant compared to the millions of US college graduate annually. The argument about "they took our jobs" is not really valid to me.

You turn them away and China or the EU would gladly take them.

Firstly, there's a good reason the people in question want to go the US instead of China or the EU. EU salaries are much lower and the local language is always a barrier. The same holds for China, salaries can be higher but not US level and then there's all the other obvious drawbacks of living there.

Secondly, China also wouldn't gladly take them, it's the direct opposite

if you don't dangle this GC reward

In China a GC-like reward is unfathomable.

There is no green card category for being irreplaceable. PERM is for situations where it's difficult to find equally good US workers, with "equally good" left intentionally vague. The idea is that the employer is expected to argue convincingly that the foreign applicant is clearly the best person for the job. That's inherently subjective, but most things in immigration and the job market are.

Sometimes there is a shortage of domestic candidates with sufficient qualifications and experience in the general field. Sometimes the job is highly specialized, and nobody outside of a handful of internal candidates can possibly do it without extensive training. Sometimes the candidate was selected according to the established standards of a profession, and the job only exists for that particular person. And so on.

A fake application process is dishonest, regardless of whether it looks like a real job opportunity or is intentionally kept hidden. But if the process is open and you know in advance that no other candidate can possibly qualify, you are being not only dishonest but also impolite. Unrelated people may apply thinking it's a real job opportunity, wasting their time.

>The difference in opinion, AFAICT, is you think a GC is a reward for getting a job after besting others (including citizens) in interviews.

No, the difference in opinion is the absurdity of it all. To the extent that the government (DOL) can influence the labor market, for any practical benefit, it needs to do so at the outset and quickly. The market is already altered here with a large immigrant workforce where there are no restrictions on being a temporary worker - even for years or decades. They just have fewer rights. And it doesn't even work as intended. Let's say that Apple wants to hire a permanent employee directly. The PERM process takes a year. Should every company just wait for a year so that DOL can get it together before they can hire employees ? They do what the current regulations permit - bring them as temp workers and let the PERM thing resolve in the background.

They are not supposed to jump through hoops. They created these positions, did not advertise them externally like other jobs the solicit for nor accept electronic submissions. You know those job notices in some random “break room” stapled to the notification board? That’s what this is and why they got nailed.

Canada did that. Obliterated their white collar job market. Worked out well for every one but the canadian born worker.

But the notion that I was taking the job of a native-born American was ridiculous because I had been doing the job in London before.

This isn’t even wrong.

Obviously you displaced a US citizen unless you’re trying to advance the risible position that no US citizen could do what you do.

Obviously you displaced a US citizen [...]

I'm not sure this is obvious. 1) Apple is a multi-national company, and hires an employee in the UK. 2) This employee relocates to the US

At what point do they displace the US citizen? All Apple jobs are not earmarked for US citizens (+residents, etc...), and they're already doing the job when they move to the US. Unless they're hired abroad for the express purpose of relocating to the US, then it's not "obvious" to me that they've displaced anyone.

Suppose I work in an org with dev teams in multiple countries. If I relocate from one site to another, am I freeing up a slot in the country I leave and taking one in the country I move to?

According to TFA, the discrimination happens when Apple doesn’t adequately look for a U.S. employee and instead chooses to to relocate you to the US. How is that not obvious? If Apple is happy to hire you in the UK and you’re happy to live there, the DOJ isn’t going to ask many questions.

This discussion is about EB2/green card process, not L1/H1 visa that employee is given when relocating to the US. That is why it is not obvoius. In a lot of cases, an employee works in UK (or another European) office for many years, then moves to the US on L1A visa, works there for several years, applies to green card (not with intent to stay in US forever, but because L1 visa (and H1 too) cannot be extended for more than 5/6 years). Then to get this EB2/green card document employer has to pretend that they plan to replace this person who is already working in this organization for 10 or more years. It is not specific for Apple, Intel is doing the same when a CPU architect from Haifa or fab engineer from Dublin is working in Hillsboro for several years and decide to stay for a few more years. Or google bringing someone from Zurich.

Yes… and you’re not allowed to do that unless you truly can’t find an American to fill the role.

Right, but the argument that the original comment was making is that the government's policy is incorrect.

My comment argues that independent of government policy, relocating an existing employee from one country to another does not consume a position that was otherwise free, unless the employee was hired expressly for the purpose of relocation.

Yes you are doing both actually.

There is a special visa for this. In the US it is an L1 visa.

Many engineering teams hire the good people they can find.

If one quits, nothing says you'll find another one, and you may keep going with one less person.

Unpopular opinion that throws a wrench into the whole h1b/eb1/eb2 debate. Being a rando sde (even at faang) isn't specialized. We have tpms getting eb1c (the einstein gc) which has now been backlogged for good reason. I think any loosening on h1bs/ebxs etc should coincide with the upping of the requirements to the o1 visa -https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...but even this can be gamed.

> Obviously you displaced a US citizen unless you’re trying to advance the risible position that no US citizen could do what you do.

I didn't displace anyone because the headcount in my department was global, not tied to location.

I know it's hard to accept for people with old-fashioned nationalist ideas about immigration, but a lot of well-paid jobs these days can be done anywhere in the world.

These are not jobs in America, but rather they are jobs at American companies. And with these immigration policies you're doing your best to make sure the job doesn't get done in America.

For myself, I left the US but still work for an American company. They pay me a California-level salary but I pay my taxes to Finland. From your point of view that must be somehow better than if I was doing the same job but paying taxes to USA? You're losing out on the tax revenue, but at least you don't have people like me as neighbors, so all is good, I guess.

This is what economists call a "partial equilibrium" analysis. This is a polite(?) academic way of saying it's wrong.

Hiring workers does not displace other workers because they come with increased demand for labor of their own. It does increase specialization on the team because you need to find comparative advantage, but that's nearly as much of an issue.

There is no reason to assume that they’re being paid any less than others at Apple.

Sure there is. The fact that permanent residency costs money and is often desirable means that there is value in a PERM position over a comparable one with no path to permanent residency. Therefore it is only natural for applicants to require less money to find the compensation desirable.

You are writing like we are talking about rocket scientists.

PERM applies to both EB2 and EB3 (so in real world anyone making from as low as $50k+/year depending on role qualifies) and most bodyshops apply for green card for all employees - it's just part of business cost. For EB2 PhD is not needed - MS from online paper mill is enough. For EB3, any degree works.

It's not tens of thousands in cost - it's below $10k all in. PERM Fees to USCIS are around $1200.

The whole system is abused to the end and need to be completely gutted and redone so high end engineer working for Google making $700k was differentiated from Wipro employee making $80k. Right now they are in the same queue. Prevailing wage is a joke as it does not include stock options and does not reflect real salary levels.

Why should someone making 700k be any different than an 80k employee?

Nurses make way less than 700k and should probably be the absolute top of the list.

Because if there was actually a shortage of $80k employees the salary would increase. There is no better way to determine where there’s a shortage than the salary.

Are you implying that there is an intractable shortage of CEOs in America, that it's MBA education system has utterly failed to meet demand for?

Would that explain why their salaries have skyrocketed over the past few decades?

There is shortage of world class CEOs in America. If we talk about Fortune 500 (the only ones where CEOs make a bank) - there are literally less than a thousand people who are or have been CEO of such companies. If we accept immigration system premise (you are qualified and are in similar role outside US right now) the pool of available candidates is likely few dozen people worldwide. The fact that millions of people may want that role is irrelevant as they are not qualified.

MBA education system is irrelevant too as it does not produce CEOs - it produces L4/L5 PMs few of whom after 30 years of stellar career will climb to be CEOs.

Gosh, it all makes sense now!

That is categorically not how salaries work. SWE compensation is high because impact per worker is high, and because adding people doesn’t scale linearly, not because they’re somehow much more in demand.

Why do you get to pick which occupations are most worthy?

Why do you get to pick which occupations are most worthy?

Citizens of Republics are given the inherent right to debate matters of public policy concern.

That right is inalienable, not given.

Good catch.

Why do you hate nurses and want their salary to go down? You understand that result of nurses getting top of the list priority will be lower salary? You can probably drive nurse salaries all the way down to 30k if US recognizes Philippine nurses degrees.

There is society need to drive down unreasonable salaries (700k at Google) - at minimum more cool stuff will be done in US. It’s much less clear that there is society need to drive down middle class salaries.

I think their unstated assumption is that higher pay = higher skill = harder to find.

Nurses make way less than 700k and should probably be the absolute top of the list.

actually, nurses are. The process apple discriminated in from the article, nurses are considered by statute to be "approved" so they just move on to the next step (i140/i485 or visa) which is just a rubber stamp assuming all the documents are in order.

nurses to bypass the PERM certification process is the Schedule A designation. Schedule A is a list of pre-certified occupations that the Department of Labor (DOL) has determined there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available. Because of this, employers seeking to hire foreign workers in these occupations do not need to go through the labor certification process, which is what PERM involves.

Hilariously enough, a real rocket scientist, e.g. a NASA scientist, has an average salary around 100K. SWE salary is heavily inflated and even the flawed process we have now is better than one where you only look at the absolute amount of compensation. Why, most scientist jobs requiring PhD pay less than 200K.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/NASA-Scientist-Salaries-E73...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/senior-scient...

I no longer know the current prices for EB2 total cost. But years back I know the cost was >10K+ per employee, accounting for multiple filings, expedited filings, lawyer fee, etc. I doubt it would be below 10K now. Even an NIW can cost 15K easily by going to a law firm and personally haggle the price with them. Can you tell me how do you know EB2 cost less than 10K?

An online paper mill graduate would have a very hard time passing EB2 vetting. Where would they get the paper citations, the impact, the achievements required? Unless they have years of experience in which they made clear they are valuable enough to the field. That is why I said experienced masters. And you think USCIS don't look at what institution the applicant comes from?

Aerospace engineers at SpaceX earn 133-212k according to Glassdoor:https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/SpaceX-Aerospace-Engineer-S...

NASA scientists don’t work on rockets; they design experiments for space missions and stuff like that.

An online paper mill graduate would have a very hard time passing EB2 vetting.

Nope. Not at all. I am rather intimately familiar with lot of people who have gone through that vauntedEB2 vettingwith their fake US or foreign degrees, fake job experiences at fake companies with fake addresses and so on.

Few may get caught but most of them will get through the system with enough persistence.

EB2 has separate sub categories. Regular EB2 does not require papers or citations. It just needs an advanced degree or equivalent in experience. The categories that benefit from papers, citations etc., are EB2-NIW and EB1A/B. Those don't require PERM as USCIS takes on the role of the adjudicator there. PERM is handled by Dept. of Labor.

What % of approved PERM applications do you think had a salary of $50k? Clown.

5-10%? You would be surprised. I know person who got green card with ~$40k salary working as logistics manager in transport company.

There is a reason companies pay for this process: they are allowed to maintain the worker for as long as the process goes. And for many people this can take up to 10 years, depending on nationality. If they have a good employee, it is a no-brainer to pay so they cannot leave the company, under the penalty of having the green card process cancelled or restarted.

If they have a good employee

I think you mean cheaper employee.

I really don't think Big Tech is using H1-B and greencards to buy fake loyalty or cheaper labor. If your current employer applied for a visa for you, your future employer will too. (To some extent, startups get screwed here, since nobody on an H1-B is going to ditch Apple to work at your startup.) H1-B salaries are public information; and they are exactly the same as what everyone else puts on levels.fyi. I worked at Google; I saw the mandatory H1-B job postings and there was no difference in comp or requirements between my role and the ones being advertised. Filling out paperwork so that every qualified candidate in the world can work there is the cost of doing business; if there were more qualified applicants, they'd hire more people. To the visaholders, this is just another perk for working at a big tech company.

When I clicked the link, I thought this article was going to be something like "non-US citizens get an extra $10k in perks because these companies do all their visa work for them, and US citizens don't need a visa". But it's something much more obscure that doesn't matter.

Right but the argument (the good one) isn't that they're paid less - it's that you're paid less because they are available. If US employers couldn't import workers they'd have to pay you more.

I don't really believe it. The companies would just offshore to a country with more preferential immigration treatment. Remember that plan for a boat in international waters where programmers who can't get visas would work for companies in San Francisco with the same time zone? That's what limiting immigration would accomplish. Immigration has maybe one effect, increasing the tax base.

If it's so easy to offshore these jobs, why hasn't Apple done it yet and quit fooling around with this whole onerous visa process? Out of the good of their heart?

It's a good question. There's just something about being in the same country. It's hard to explain why though.

I work for a fully remote company. Most of us are based in the US but the company also hires people from some other countries through some kind of agency. Even though many, probably a majority of the US-based people are immigrants (myself included), and many don't speak English any better than the agency people, there's still somehow a clear divide. The agency people are great - talented, skilled, no issues. But somehow they understand the business less. Their contributions are purely technical. It's clear that the company could not just can us all and hire the same number of agency guys, but it's hard to explain why.

My previous employer once tried to outsource some stuff to India and sent a guy over there to oversee it. It didn't go well. But we had lots of Indian people before and since in the company, and they were great. They had the same background, same education. But they were local to the company.

I often think of the first iPhone as an extreme example of what I'm trying to say. It was built in China using parts sourced from China. But it was invented in California, and it had to be. From the inventors and the builders there's a sort of spectrum, a range of people, like the developers who conceived and wrote the first killer apps - and the closer you are to the inventing side of things, the closer you need to be to the heart of the company.

If I had to put sum it up in a word, I'd say it's "ambiguity". Knowing what to do when you don't have exact instructions requires you to be steeped in the same culture as the CEO and the main market. This isn't a fixed thing: I'm sure there's a market for luxury devices in China now that Americans find it hard to understand. But in general the countries that are the most developed have already experienced what other countries are going through, and thus they are uniquely positioned to dictate what the next big thing is.

So companies will always have to do some hiring locally, and the harder the job, the more important it is to be local.

It's a good question. There's just something about being in the same country. It's hard to explain why though.

Simply speaking, it's better to expand vertically because it's a lot easier to work with people in the same time zone. That's one reason tech is on the west coast.

This maybe be true, but it doesn't come close to explaining the situation. Going back to one my my examples: we are based in the US and the agency staff I mentioned are based mostly in South America. I'm not sure what their local tz is but they generally keep to US Eastern hours. In contrast the US staff are spread across all US timezones. Still the US based staff are somehow more integral.

Because the prospective employees want to live in the US and the current legal climate allows that. Since you can't up and move to the US (from most countries) without a sponsor, the employment is the arrangement that allows this.

Because people are not automatons, there are often situations where a company has offices in, say, New York and Zurich, and some employees in the New York office moved from Zurich and some employees in the Zurich office moved from New York.

Legally there cannot be comp differences. The issue is once you get the H1B you have them for 7+ years. Obviously they can change companies but it is not without risk.

The applicant keeps their position in the green card line even if they restart the process with a different company. If it will take 10 years at the current company, it will also take 10 years at the next one if they leave right now.

So it does not help retention in the way you believe.

It is beneficial for retention because companies who don't apply for green cards for employees will lose them to firms that apply.

PERM is a much more rigorous and demanding process

It's not rigorous or demanding; it's a mostly pointless bureaucratic exercise in bogus paperwork where lawyers and the gov. make bank. From the article : It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions," the DOJ said.

Apple actually felt it was worth it

Apple doesn't feel. It's just commonsense and market pressure. The alternative would be indefinite indentured servitude.

Dept. of Labor takes a year to evaluate these PERM applications. PERM has charming and quaint requirements like taking out an ad in a Sunday newspaper so that applicants can apply and other nonsense. All while the employee is already working for the company on a visa. The whole thing is farcical.

it's a mostly pointless bureaucratic exercise in bogus paperwork where lawyers and the gov. make bank

I love how people always think that The Government™ does things to make money, rather some congressman from the Bible Belt just engaging in straight up xenophobia.

I mean the outcome is that it's a lot of wasted time and money. The original motivation for these policies was a pro-labor/protectionist stance in hiring immigrants, but that is completely subverted because there are no restrictions in hiring temp. immigrant workers. This PERM thing only comes up if you want to keep them permanently. The process basically subverts everyone's expectations, disappoints everyone, and just hands gov. and lawyers money.

I see it as arbitrary barriers to immigration to satisfy those who don't want to see foreigners in the US. The fact it was corrupted to become a money-making business is just a natural result of any archaic laws in the US. It is rather the norm that lawyers and politicians make a dumb law to get attention, then later on they refuse to change it because it is profitable to keep it that way. If it wasn't profitable, they would change it to get political points already.

Let me know as soon as any state outside the Bible Belt elects a governor of Indian descent, okay? Meanwhile, please don’t complain about “xenophobia” while simultaneously making extremely ignorant and offensive generalizations about specific parts of the world.

PERM has charming and quaint requirements like taking out an ad in a Sunday newspaper so that applicants can apply and other nonsense.

Well, that certainly explains why I saw Lucid advertising in a New Orleans free newspaper and applied and got nothing but a rejection.

No such thing as wage depression or abuse at this point

You're saying that Apple can't find people from less-developed countries with these specific credentials and then offer them a starting salary that's $100k under what they would have needed to offer to someone from California?

because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American once they have EB2.

Equal to an American in legal rights perhaps, but there is no right to competitive pay.

Equal to an American in legal rights perhaps, but there is no right to competitive pay.

The theoretical factor that's supposed to depress pay for workers on non-immigrant visas is that they don't have easy job mobility - the bar to hire an H-1B is much higher than to hire a US native worker. Once you have an EB-2 (an immigrant visa, that entitles you to a Green Card), that no longer applies - modulo national-security type positions that require citizenship you're just as hirable as a US native.

The theoretical factor that's supposed to depress pay for workers on non-immigrant visas is that they don't have easy job mobility

There’s more to it than that, but that’s one of the big ones. Have you worked with foreign contractors/outsourcing before? If so you know why jumping to another job would be difficult.

EB2 requirements: BS or equivalent + 5 years of progressive experience. Or, alternatively, a very light version of EB-1 "exceptional ability" checklist. The fees are couple grand and the major expense is in interviewing and rejecting enough candidates to justify the need. You seem to be confusing it with EB-1.

While it's true these people already work there etc. etc. EB2, just like EB3, requires the DOL certification that "there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment". [1]

This sucks for firms like Apple because there are quite enough U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take a whole bunch of jobs that are being held by a BS with 5 years of experience... Imagine you are an officer of the U.S. government and a lawyer from Apple sends you an application for a, for example, front end developer. Will you honestly believe that there are literally no U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take such a job? At Apple no less. It's not "some folks won't take a job at Apple/FB/Google/etc for political reasons, so there!". It's literally a claim that there are no US citizens or LPRs who could do that job. How credible you'd think such a claim is?

1.https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/perm...

It's literally a claim that there are no US citizens or LPRs who could do that job. How credible you'd think such a claim is?

Very credible, because people already employed don’t really count. It doesn’t matter at what company.

Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

And that’s how it works. Otherwise there would be no need for immigration in this sector at all.

Very credible, because people already employed don’t really count. It doesn’t matter at what company.

Why don't they count? Already employed people are recruited by Apple, I get spammed by Apple recruiters, I know a dozen of people who had been poached by Apple from various companies. Apple does hire people who are already employed, they pay quite a bit more so many employed people are looking if not for increased prestige then for increased TC.

Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

I am not sure I follow, this is obviously false on its face. Why exactly can not it be filled?

there is no such thing as an EB2 visa. EB2 is a category for Green Card.

PERM is one stage in the Green Card process. (it goes: PERM -> I140 -> I485.https://maggio-kattar.com/three-stages-employer-sponsored-pe...)

https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/gree...

Technically speaking, a green card is still a visa.

there is a distinction that probably escapes most native citizens here: they are talking about EB2 visa, not H1B.

Often, it requires an advance degree and higher qualification than H1B too, PhDs or experienced masters.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the PERM process applies when H1B holders seek to gain permanent residency too - at least that's been my experience. It also applies to the L1 etc:

https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/h-1b-green-card-transitio...

PERM certification is required to get a GC on an H1B (it's not needed to get an H1B, just required when the H1B holder seeks to get permanent residency).

There's another side to this story that the media reporting almost never mentions on this; many in the PERM process have lived in the USA for a long time and established families, children, communities etc. To deny them during PERM literally means in many cases to ship them and their American children "home" to a country they may not have seen for 20 years. In some cases the American kids won't even be able to speak the main language of their parent's birth country.

The solution as always is pretty simple - we need to divorce immigration status from employment - the processes should not be linked. This would at a stroke remove incentives for less scrupulous employers to abuse the system too.

But then you would have issues with how to evaluate the immigrant. You may say degree, work history, other achievements, etc but those are already being used as qualifiers in the current system, in addition to the job requirements. So any attempts at decoupling immigration from employment would be seen as "open border" by many politicians and their bases, i.e. not going to be a reality ever.

If even a law trying to let US-educated PhDs getting an H1B easier (just to work, not GC) get blocked, you know how anti-immigration the current political climate is.

No such thing as wage depression or abuse at this point because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American

Wage depression is a function of being willing and able to work in the field, not of residency type.

Residency type can only depress individual wages for the person with the odd residency.

or a decade if you were born in the wrong place...

That's being generous. I'm pretty sure that for people born in India the backlog is well over 100 years. The reason being that only 7500 green cards per year can be issued to people of any particular nationality. If there are 750k Indians with approved GC applications under employment category, that's a 100 year backlog. I'm sure there's a statistic somewhere, and I remember reading an article a couple of years back that claimed that this particular backlog has surpassed 90 years, so it's not unthinkable that today it's over 100.

EB2 final action date for Indian nationals is currently at 01JAN12. Which means that USCIS is currently processing applications from almost 12 years ago. Which means they have to wait a decade before their application even gets approved.

There are people that will quite literally never see an EB2 or EB3 green card in their lives despite having an approved application. The only viable path to a green card for those is marrying a US citizen, period. (as that category has no cap or quota whatsoever)

native citizens

I hope that by this you mean Native Americans. Or are colonizers now considered native citizens?

Doesn’t that make it worse? That they’ll pursue a far more difficult and costly approach rather than, idk, just try to hire the best candidate for the role?

PERM certification is the closest to corporate brain drain that exists. On top of that, people overlook the O1 visa. Both of these are visas that the regular person just can't compete with. They're for individuals the US wants todrainfrom another country (and are extraordinarily capable of it) and are given to individuals ofhighaccomplishment.

If you're afraid of foreign competition, you should be worried about H1B and similar visas (visas for foreigners willing to slot into a normal "skilled" position), which this article isn't touching on at all. Those are the visas of your peers that companies are willing to hire extranationally.

Immigration is brutal and absurd!! One can waste their whole life waiting for a piece of paper!!!

I worked at a company owned by some large banks. When the immigration lawyer came for a meetings roughly once per year, the place got super quiet. Everyone I worked with did basic stuff ... docker, Spring Boot, and I didn't understand how such basic positions needed visas in such a large metro like Phoenix. Yet, the pay was comparable ... there must be some angle I don't understand.

"You will obey your manager or you will be deported" is very powerful.

Yeah.... Except that this is not true. There's not enough talent in US, so we have to seek elsewhere.

American graduates have these starry eyes and want to work mostly in two types of companies FAANG or early stage startups... Who's going to go to work at pharma companies, banks, electric companies?

There's not enough talent in US

The hiring pool could be larger, but HR and hiring managers don't want men over 50.

Yeah, I'm sure there are a ton of programmers over 50.

I can't tell if that's sarcasm but C is over 50 years old.

There is no hidden pool of SWE talent over 50. The number of engineers that are over 50 now is going to be roughly equivalent to the number software engineers there were 30 years ago, which is maybe 5% of the number today.

The market solution to this is for those companies to pay more until they attract people to work there.

There's plenty of reasons a job market wouldn't clear even if you raised the pay. You can't get blood from a stone, sort of thing.

For instance, American citizens are not going to become farmworkers even if you paid them FAANG engineer wages. They just aren't.

I think to attract people to certain careers, anytime after they're born is too late. You have to have started with their parents. Good chess players are good because they started at age 5, not because they went to school for it.

I don't even think this was true when people were saying it 5 years ago, but it's definitely not true now. Literally yesterday I met a kid doing sales at Microcenter with a CS degree who couldn't find a dev job after 1.5 years of searching. Go to any programmers meetup in your city and there will be dozens of people trying to network into a dev job. Look up any video online of "I applied to 500 jobs" from people trying to break into a software role. Look at the reddit page for any bootcamp to see all the CS grads asking if it'll get them a job. American CS graduates aren't starry eyed for FAANG jobs, they're starving for any jobs

yeah -_-. graduating in april and just hoping I can get something in the field

So what you're saying is banks don't want to pay well.

Have you seen what pharma companies that aren’t Genentech pay their tech staff? Also they love hiring postdocs to keep the wages down.

Maybe they could sell a downtown skyscraper so they can afford competitive salaries.

I dunno man I’ve been rejected by a lot of companies over the last ~8 years, seems like they can find talent just fine.

Guess those companies can start paying more. There is no labor shortage, only a wage shortage.

Except, of all nations in the world, the US is stillby farthe largest foreign skilled talent hirer.

Brain drain is something they bought into during the cold war and this idea that "they don't have talent" is ridiculous. They have a shit ton of homegrown talent and arealsomore than willing to hireyourtalent to further monopolize and supplement it.

Frankly, it's too powerful. We need much stronger protections for workers if we're going to continue down this route. Deportation threats undermine labor's bargaining power, driving down wages and working conditions.

How can we expect to operate a democracy when workers have this gun to their head?

What gun? I see only the one you’re asking to be pointed at others.

Deportation orders in the United States are executed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE agents are authorized to carry firearms such as handguns, rifles, and shotguns.

ok. Say we didn't have ICE. How will you now justify holding others at gunpoint to violate a contract you voluntarily signed while having the part that benefits you still enforced? Or is immigration the only thing you were thinking of when you asked for more laws?

That's a factor, but I think the H1-B lock-in is more important. Assuming no mistreatment at all is occurring, an employee who you can be fairly confident won't quit still has extra value to you. The H1-B requiring that the employee either goes back to their original country or lines up another company to take over the visa means that they're much more likely to stick around.

Some H1Bs don't even want to be promoted past senior due to higher risk at staff.

Perfect workers.

They can also get married to a citizen if they find one.

It doesn’t need to be said. At big tech companies it is implicit. You see coworkers being let go and the difference between easily switching to another job because you are a citizen vs having to wrap everything in US and go back to home country.

I suspect that this is more a "certain managers wanted certain types of employees," as opposed to a systemic, companywide decree from Up High (like IBM's ageism).

Apple just makes too damn much money to worry overmuch about salaries. If anything, a lot of managers like H1Bs, because they can drive them like slaves. I've seen exactly that, in front of my own eyes. It's pretty disturbing, if you are a manager like me.

Weren't Apple one of the ringleaders in the conspiracy to suppress wages between the large tech companies a few years back?

Yes, ten years back[0]:

In one email exchange after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt’s note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.

Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel in 2010 settled a U.S. Department of Justice probe by agreeing not to enter into such no-hire deals in the future. The four companies had since been fighting the civil antitrust class action.

0.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement-i...

Good point. I am willing to stand corrected, but I've also seen what I've seen.

I think the third option is more plausible; neither executive decree nor individual managers' particular penchant drives these trends, but rather widespreadculturaltrends that individual managers act on subconsciously.

We're likely talking about favoring H-1B visas; predominantly Indian, and predominantly male, with a median age of 34.[0] Do individual hiring managers have individual, personal biases? Yes, but what do you call a collective group who all exhibit the same bias? We can speculate about their personal reasons, but keep in mind that H-1B workers are inordinate victims of wage theft! [1]

Thousands of skilled migrants employed by HCL Technologies—an India-based IT staffing firm that places H-1B workers at top corporations like Disney, FedEx, and Google—appear to have been underpaid by at least $95 million

So perhaps it is simple economics: precarious immigrant workers are easier to steal from.

0.https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/H1B_...

1.https://www.epi.org/press/new-epi-report-reveals-wage-theft-...

FAANG SWE and body-shop “IT” careers couldn’t be more different.

You exaggerate, but maybe you can instead articulate the differences?

In the corporate IT model, the business defines requirements and then seeks implementation resources. The goal is on-time delivery and passable correctness at minimum cost. That might be fulfilled through in-house IT employees, a COTS product, an onshore or offshore consultancy, or some hybrid. In some cases there is no substitute for expensive in-house onshore talent, but the business is always incentivized to seek one.

FAANG engineering shops are not like this at all. Tech teams on their own initiative or with very general charters conceive, create, and release products. If product “requirements” are even written down, there’s a good chance the lead engineers on the project are coauthors. Engineers beyond the entry level are expected to be curious, creative, self-directed… basically bounce around a general problem space creating value wherever and however they can, as long as stakeholders sign off prior to any disruptive changes and there’s a measurable impact to cite for year-end perf.

The value created can be mind-boggling - and so can the compensation packages, at no real loss to management. Any team’s backlog of opportunities is deep, and all of them are much more valuable than any amount of wages that could conceivably be spent chasing them. You don’t just want the job done to spec at minimum cost - you want the most capable and innovative people you can get to be at the whiteboard thinking of jobs it would be interesting to do, because the carrying cost if they’re just okay is insignificant, and the upside if they pull something really brilliant is unlimited.

Apple just makes too damn much money to worry overmuch about salaries.

Apple is a publicly traded company whose shareholders would not tolerate overpaying for labor.

Further: Apple was caught colluding with other major tech industry employers with regards to hiring/salary.

So please do go on about how Apple doesn't care about labor costs.

And also, look at the wages and benefits for Apple Store employees which are shit for the level of technical expertise they're expected to have and the products they're selling (there's usually at least some correlation between compensation and the cost of goods being sold - obviously not anything approaching linearity.)

Then look at how Apple store staff are starting to unionize, much to the terror of their Head of Retail, who likely makes half a million dollars a year in cash compensation alone - $250/hour, which is more than ten times the base wage for a retail employee (supposedly now $22/hour.)

Your naivete is pretty stunning. There isn't a single corporate employer on the planet who doesn't do everything they can to minimize labor costs.

There isn't a single corporate employer on the planet who doesn't do everything they can to minimize labor costs.

If a company did "everything" they could to minimize labor costs they'd just fire everyone. But they don't, because this is a bad way to run a growth company. Focus on improving what you can get from them instead of managing them out.

Similarly, people say companies care about profit over everything, but they obviously don't because, say, scented candle companies sell scented candles and not fentanyl.

> Your naivete is pretty stunning.

Yeah, you know, this is a professional forum. I may not be important to your career, but a hell of a lot of other people that are, hang out, here.

That's one reason I don't write stuff like that.

Apple seems to have an unusually long-term orientation with respect to employees and to value tenure and retention in a way that the rest of Silicon Valley does not.

I believe it's somewhat overrated how often people switch companies; a growing company will have a lot of shorter-career employees simply because it just hired them all. Apple has been around a few more decades is all.

Well, if X is working for a manager M for 3 years at Apple(for that matter, any company), M wants to make sure that wheoever applies to X's role during the PERM process (labor certification to ensure that no US citizens/perm residents are available to fill X's role) gets dinged 100%, no exceptions whatsoever. The way they can ding applicants takes shape in different forms: (a) make the job very very specific, thereby showing that other applicants don't have specific skills (b) make the job very generic, then ask for very very precise skills that X's role needs (c) make the interview really tough (d) add extra rounds of interviews (e) a combination of all of the foregoing.

Isn't the foreign national's status kind of captured at the discretion of the employer?

It sounds like a larger power asymmetry and as an employer, you want that as large as possible.

I mean it also increases stress on both ends, which affects executive function so the parties become handicapped by the relationship, but that's apparently less valuable than the large power differentials to many.

I wonder if there's quantitative studies of firms performances with respect to this. If the theory is right, it's long term one of the more disadvantageous strategies. (Using Apple as N=1 doesn't cut it as a study here)

It’s pretty disturbing, if you are a good human

H1Bs are more slave-like. They can't quit easily. That alone is worth a lot.

Or more relevant to this, Apple wanted to retain the employee that had been working for them for 3-5 years instead of replacing them with a completely new hire because of bureaucratic legalese.

The PERM application was almost certainly submitted for an existing employee, who had most likely been employed with Apple for somewhere between 2-4 years. Thanks to bureaucratic nonsense they were then required to open up that position to outsiders instead, and if they found someone else who could be hired fire the person that had been doing the job well enough that Apple was willing to pick up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to go ahead with their PERM application.

I'm sure many US-based tech companies can be blamed for preferring the cheaper option ... I would think our visa process plays no small part here, further the lax compliance on what "special skillset" means in the case of H-* visas.

The system allows it, why not take advantage of such.

Work visas of this type should pretty clearly provide a path to at least permanent residency, otherwise the workers are captive employees, and, in any case, highly educated skilled workers that an employer is arguing they can't replace out of resident populations seem like a population that even people that want restrictions on immigration would consider good candidates for it.

H1B should be an annual auction so that the fair market value is captured by the country as a whole. Existing employers should be required to pay the latest market price to maintain their visas.

That would boost wages for all other workers and discriminatorily raise costs against orgs that do not want to “hire American”.

Markets and auctions are often good ways of allocating things, but a big flaw with this is that there is still some arbitrary, "magic number" of H1B visas to auction. The current number is not derived from anything empirical, it's just a number some politicians picked.

The current number is not derived from anything empirical, it's just a number some politicians picked.

That’s fine too. If it’s too low, companies can lobby to have it increased. If it’s too high, workers can lobby to have it reduced.

That's thinking of it like some kind of optimal number though, which really isn't the case anyway.

There is no fixed sized pie. How many big tech companies were founded or run by immigrants or their children?

There’s absolutely an optimal number. It’s whatever number the citizen’s as a whole decide that number to be. That’s the de facto optimal number.

The auction system to maximize the fees collected would apply regardless of the number of visas.

That's not really how these kinds of things are decided in the US.

I thought an H1B is a dual-intent visa and has a documented path towards permanent residency. Does it not?

Dual-intent just means that you'reallowedto be interested in permanent residency. If you have a B-2 visitor visa, for example, customs won't let you into the country if you tell them you're hoping to stay. The actual process of permanent residency has to come from a separate program, such as the PERM one Apple used here.

I would argue path to PR on humanitarian grounds, but not citizen centric ones. It's probably ideal from a citizen's perspective to be like Dubai and attract talent with easy professional temp visas and then shitcan them the second they run out of money or become inconvenient.

I find it interesting that Apple hasn't done what many other large US corporations have done and just open offices in a country like India. Then they essentially get rid of any US based employees. No H1B's needed and you're still paying pennies on the dollar for the work.

Try working with people on a 12 hr time difference. It's very difficult.. I don't believe it truly works. I don't think management at some places know it doesn't work because they aren't involved in the actual work.

I don't know about 12 hours away - that'd be China and Perth - but there's certainly FAANG engineering offices in Europe, Canada, Japan, Sydney…

But FAANG isn't going to leave Silicon Valley. If your theory says that's a good idea, you should ditch it for one that has empirical evidence for working.

FWIW, it looks like Mumbai is 13.5h ahead of California and 10.5h ahead of New York, which works out to 12h if you average them

Brand.

Is this the same DOJ going after SpaceX for the opposite?

SpaceX works on (potentially) military techologies covered by ITAR protection.

... which makes the DoJ going after SpaceX for allegedlynothiring refugees/non-citizens all the stranger.

Because those people were able to legally do some of those jobs, but SpaceXchosenot to consider them because it would be more administration/bureaucracy for SpaceX. Ergo, discriminating on the basis of their status.

It was the same with disabilities, leading to the creation of the ADA. Companies would argue that they shouldn't have to hire someone in a wheelchair because it would cost them money to build wheelchair ramps and other accessibility aids.

The reality is that the regulations and restrictions in the other direction are much more severe. It's not that SpaceX cares about whom they hire; they'd hire anyone competent. The gov. will come down hard on export control and other issues if SpaceX slips up. So SpaceX essentially said fck it, just be a citizen or LPR. And this is more a sign of exasperation than anything else.

Well, they are seemingly allow to hire permanent residents and are not restricted to citizens only. If there was a citizen only requirement this would be a non issue.

You aren't allowed to exclude somebody who would otherwise be eligible because their work permit has an expiry date

Both are illegal in most circumstances, so yes.

gotta toe the line! or just hire more robots, much easier.

They're going after both companies for discrimination on the basis of national origin.

Same in the sense of "discrimination"

Opposite in the sense of the direction of the discrimination.

Not the opposite. The full group referenced here is “US citizens and certain non-US citizens whose permission to live in and work in the United States does not expire," and they went after SpaceX for discrimination against the latter (refugees and asylees, specifically).

there's no contraddiction there, discrimination is bad both ways

I have worked at other FAANGs where I see certain immigrant managers only seem to hire other immigrants from the same country...

happens every time where I work. once you get a manager from India, they will rarely hire anyone other than Indians again.

Every group does this, but its okay to openly write discriminatory shit against Indians and chinese online.

Just look at the academic hiring phds for aerospace related department in US and tell me its not filled with hispanics.

When you start pointing fingers at people other than Indian/SEA and Chinese now it gets into the racist territory.

Yeah but we aren’t talking racism here we are talking nationalism. It’s not the same to hire lots of hispanics or to say “wow this team is primarily asian”. Here i’m saying particular hiring managers only want people who werebornin their country of origin.

In my case, I wasn't referring to indians, I meant chinese immigrants. My last few managers have been Indian immigrants and they all had diverse teams. I'm sure it does happen though.

You don't want to be the odd one out on a team since you'll be the first to get laid off. Either find a team with a good mix or stick to your own color.

Apple hasn't laid engineers off since the early 2000s IIRC. It didn't happen in 2021 because they didn't overhire like everyone else did, nor did their execs decide to punish their employees like everyone else did.

I've noticed this at companies I've worked at. Either at the team level, org level, or even the company level. I've observed it from White, Chinese and Indians. I think there's just a human tendency of in group bias.

Except only one of these groups gets penalized for the behavior.

Sounds like there can be an easy fix for something like this with a few minor HR policy changes

This is the thing where when you want to sponsor a specific employee for an H1B you have to post notices pretending to look for American citizens instead.

Every FAANG is guilty of this. Every startup is guilty of this. There is no law less adhered to in the US.

Everyone posts the notice on the office fridge or the receptionist stand or runs some newspaper ad to cover the nominal letter of the law. It's completely pointless.

Just to add some context here.

Are you telling me all those job opportunities in the back of IEEE Spectrum where they give 1 line job descriptions and tell you to mail your resume to some anonymous post office box aren’t actual job opportunities? I can’t believe it!

In other words, professional societies are complicit in this too.

I wonder if they didn’t do it, ifthe argument would be made that “look, these companies didn’t even advertise in IEEE Spectrum!” so they follow along and advertise there as well.

Newspapers absolutely love the PERM stuff because they charge 5x the price. Larger publications that have self-serve job postings will specifically _not_ allow PERM ads without talking to a sales rep who will give you a substantially higher price than the self-service option.

Those tricks definitely occur, but they are also not required in most cases: the relevant obligations only apply when (1) the employer falls under the regulatory definition of either an H-1B dependent employer or a willful violator , BUT NOT IF (2) the candidate is paid at least $60k per year or has a relevant master’s degree.

In our industry it’s rare for condition 2 to be false, even when condition 1 is true. So usually they can just be brazen about not trying to find American candidates. Regardless, non-discrimination rules still apply.

As the article describes, a competitive job search is always required for PERM certification. The employer needs to fill out a DOL form (https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/oflc/pdfs/9089for...), in which section I(c) requires two print advertisements for the job opportunity, and section N requires certifying that the opportunity was "clearly open" to US workers but no US worker who qualified was found.

I was responding to someone who was discussing the H-1B process, which matches what I said, not the PERM process, which matches what you said.

Well, stupid laws will get stupid compliance.

The idea that asking companies to fire their existing employer just to hire some "citizen" employee is dumb beyong measure. H1B visas should not exist in first place. Just give green card and let the person be citizen.

The problem is compounded by the racial quota for Indians in greencards. Indians are extremely good at hacking systems and longer they stay in that queue, they would totally destroy this sort of idiotic system. (This is a complement to Indians).

The unstated truth here is that when you advertise in order to get PERM certification, you really don't actually want to get applications. The 99% scenario is you've already got an employee who is on a non-immigrant visa, that you're invested in, and that you want to get onto the green card trajectory.

What are the incentives at Play here? You seem to know the rules of the game.

Here's the lay of the land:

1) You can hire temp workers on visas relatively easily and in large numbers. This benefits employers, politicians, economy, etc.

2) These workers need permanent status. US immigration is uniquely regressive in that everything flows through the employer in most cases and visa holders have no agency. So the employer needs to petition for a "permanent" employee.

3) So although these people are already employed, the employer needs to go through a PERM process where they advertise the job and claim to the gov. that they couldn't hire anyone else and this is the most qualified employee for the job.

4) Although it's a farce, DOJ gets mad if there is a perception that the employer tried to make the PERM process more favorable to the employee they already have.

And if this doesn't make it seem farcical enough: you would think that an employee who'd been working at your firm would have lots of unique skills and familiarity with corporate processes, technology etc. that are valuable, and that you could write a job description that required those.

But no - your immigration law firm will tell you that you absolutely can't do that, and that you have to pretend to hire into some kind of imaginary position that reflects the knowledge and skills of someone in the job market who would qualify but for the fact that they don't have skills that could only be acquired at your firm.

Incentive: you already have an employee on a visa working for you. They are a solid proven employee that you already invested money and other resources into (hiring/recruiting costs, onboarding, training, visa paperwork, time of other engineers helping them out during onboarding, etc.). The employee understandably wants to continue working here or, at least, remain in the country. You, as the employer, can either sponsor their green card and go through PERM or risk losing them in the near future (either to a competitor who is willing to sponsor it or due to them leaving the country voluntarily or them getting hit with some visa issues further on). The incentive here is clear.

So you decide to sponsor their green card process (as it makes sense in pretty much every aspect). Part of the application requirements is documentation proving that the employee that you are sponsoring isn’t displacing local workers and is truly high skill (given that H1B visa to green card conversion is intended for high-skill workers). The way that a lot of employers seem to be doing it is posting lowkey ads in newspapers and other places that technically would qualify, but that are unlikely to catch interest of potential candidates and are way more likely to go unnoticed. Then you wait some period of time. I don’t remember how long it is more precisely, but i remember that it is somewhere between 1-6 months. In the end, you got the document required to go forward with the process.

My guess is that for large tech companies like FAANG it wouldn’t work like that, as their job postings are everywhere. But i think the fact that their interviews are notoriously difficult to pass (relative to most jobs outside of tech, where getting an interview itself is usually way more difficult, but once you got it, you are more likely to pass), that might work as a documented proof. Not sure, as I have never observed how those companies handle it, but I have seen some small employers do variations of the dance that I have described in the previous paragraph.

For a non-citizen, becoming a citizen is a long process (Generally more than a few years). To actually stay in the US and move the process along employer sponsorship is key.

This long process incentives non-citizens to do work at below market rates and to put up with less than ideal employment treatment. Which is great for most businesses as they can get a dev for cheap that they can work for long hours and hold their current residency in the US hostage (it's not a simple process to switch employers).

However, the law has on the books for programs like this and H1B that a company has to have first failed to fill their position with a US citizen. Apple is not unique here in fudging the "tried to fill the position" requirement. I suspect there's more than a few big name company's HR departments seeing this news and getting a little worried.

I should note, the law also says PERM employees should be payed market rate... but market rate is a flexible thing and PERM employees are much less likely to complain.

Say you have an employee that you've hired on an H-1B. They're a high-performer, and you want to retain them. You can only (not really, but mostly) stay beyond six years in the US on an H-1B if you're on a green card trajectory - meaning that your employer has at least got a pending labor certification application for your position.

Getting labor certification involves demonstrating that you've made a good faith effort to hire a US native worker to fill the position. So you have to try to hire into the role; but you really don't want the search to succeed - because you've already got a good employee that's a known quantity.

Getting labor certification is a pre-requisite to getting an I-140, which is a pre-requisite to the employee getting the green card. Failing to achieve labor certification just delays the entire process and means yet more paperwork and time with the immigration attorneys.

It says Apple agreed to pay the fine, but does this mean they will actually stop discriminating in their hiring?

The DOJ wants them to allow electronic submission of applications to PERM jobs and to publish these jobs anywhere they publish other jobs. Apple agreed to this and to train their relevant employees about the issue for three years.

The article doesn't come right out and say it, but the case seems to have turned on PERM jobs being only available when there isn't a citizen/refugee/permanent-resident available to fill the position and that applying in paper was an unreasonable hurdle to these classes and that the positions should be advertised as widely as other jobs to ensure they aren't missing potential protected class workers who might like to apply.

From what I’ve seen, often these jobs already have a candidate in mind and the “post the job listing” is a pro forma requirement. So this is the government forcing the company through extra checklist that will end up in the exact same candidate being hired anyway.

The only person who can conclusively answer that would need a time machine to speak to you.

Unclear, but they committed to certain changes in behavior as well as 3 years of DOJ monitoring, so the fine is not the whole story.

I'm pretty sympathetic to Apple here. The article makes it sound like they did this for no reason, but the point of these hidden PERM positions is to be escape valves for the bonkers H1B system, which otherwise requires that skilled, valuable employees get booted out of the country after 3-6 years. If the government doesn't want Apple jumping through loopholes they should pass a more reasonable skilled visa program.

Still a bit hard to explain why Apple appeared to be hiding these jobs from qualified native candidates, refugees, and asylees.

These 'Jobs' are already filled. Someone on an H1B, who's working at the job, in some cases for years, asks for the company to get them their green card. The companynowhas to advertise that job, and take applicants on the job.

Theoretically if they find a qualified candidate they have to fire the worker who asked for PERM, and hire the candidate. Since PERM applications are seen as a perk for good employees, and having to fire the employee who asked for PERM if the process finds someone, companies hide the job applications, and find any reason to reject any applicant.

The whole process is ridiculous.

Theoretically if they find a qualified candidate they have to fire the worker who asked for PERM, and hire the candidate.

This doesn't seem like the only option to me. They could hire the newly discovered qualified candidate AND keep the existing employee on the H1B visa and try again.

For companies that are continually recruiting and have an incredibly tough interview process, it doesn't sound like a disaster to unintentionally come across someone good.

Because they don't want to be compelled by nonsensical immigration restrictions to fire and deport an existing employee they're happy with and hire someone else in their place.

I think this relates to something called batch PERM where they can apply for employment based (EB) green cards for batches of their existing visa employees in similar roles instead of doing recruitment for every single position.

Meta got in trouble with the DOJ for the same thing. They advertised for positions in newspapers and only accepted paper applications for PERM positions, unlike their other jobs which are advertised online. This is mainly because you don't want anyone actually applying for the PERM roles, since you need to prove no minimally (not most) qualified US citizen or PR could be found.

I think long term this is going to make getting PERM approved more difficult. It already takes 2-3 years now (without any audits) to get an I-140 (green card) application approved, not to mention getting the card can take decades in some cases.

People on H1B work visa can't stay on it for more than 6 years unless they actually get through PERM and get I-140, so I'm expecting this change will have a chilling effect on employers sponsoring work visas and applying for PERM unless it's a very specialized role. Why would you sponsor someone if you know they can't work in the country long term ? Hard times ahead for people on visa.

Legislators can change the rules if they don’t like them and want them changed. They can add the requirement of posting the job online.

Legislators love the status quo. Having a rotating roster of complaint foreign workers whose employers control their visa, you get to keep all their FICA taxes, AND you get to kick them out after 6 years.

It's basically Dubai++

Legislators can change the rules

Let's stop pretending that immigration law can be changed in the current political climate.

It's a remote, theoretical possibility, rather than a practical one.

All the FAANG and similar corps have been doing this for decades at this point. Our government works for them. This judgement is a joke designed to save face.

If US government worked for FAANG, you'd have a much more streamlined process...

But the fact is, that no one is happy with the immigration process. It's utterly inhumane and expensive.

It really is awful. It also has arbitrary travel restrictions so that you can’t go home in case of sickness, death, weddings in the family for instance.

And to add to that, you don’t know how long it’s going to take. It’s all rate limited in a very opaque fashion, instead of just having a simple to understand but high bar.

In either case, the US as a whole benefits so overwhelmingly from these types of immigrants. It’s really the best and brightest. They just come pre-trained and start paying high taxes immediately.

Apple agreed to pay up to $25 million in back pay

I'm sure that will be devastating for a company with 162 Billion in cash and really make them think twice

I usually scale these to "if we fined a normal person". In this case, a proportional fine to a person is about $3.91.

FB had such a case in 2018.

Even though FB/Meta is hiring again and you apply with a referral link, even as US citizen you still get no responses.

No email, no phone call, totally ghosted.

Almost seems like their job board is to appease DOJ rules but they hire on other criteria.

Is this only your personal experience or is there universal agreement amongst many people that there is zero response to US applicants right now?

I don't know if Apple does this but various bodyshop companies (eg Infosys) absolutely do. Other comments have argued PERM applicants are high-quality. That's often not the case. Let me explain the process for non-Americans on how you go through employment-based immigration to the US.

You get a work visa. There are typically 4 options. There are 4 major options (there are others that are less common):

1. H1B: requires a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. There is an annual quota. There are now more applicants than visas so there is a lottery. If you don't get picked, try again next year. H1B is issued for 3 years and can be renewed for another 3. Beyond that, you have to leave or file a PERM application and you can stay while it's pending. H1B is transferable with minimal effort to a new employer;

2. TN visa: available to Canadians. It's a 3 year nonimmigrant intent visa that requires. It can technically be renewed repeatedly but CBP is free to decide you're really living here and just deny your visa. The conservative approach is that TN holders wishing to immigrate will transfer to an H1B when possible. H1Bs can have weird conditions like when and how often you can re-enter the country. Some countries don't allow re-entry beyond the first year so leaving means going to a consulate and applying for a new visa;

3. E3 visa: much like a TN but available to Australians. It's 2 years, nonimmigrant intent and not transferable. There's a quota but it's never been hit. Many wishing to get a green card will also try to get an H1B at some point;

4. L1 visa: large companies use this for transfers. Work in Canada or London for a year and then get transferred.

This brings us to PERM. It's basically a 2 step process:

1. File a PERM. This involves many steps like getting a labor certification. This takes 6-24+ months. USCIS may randomly audit you, which can add 1-2 years. They may have a reason too but but they also randomly audit a large number of applications, allegedly to stop the system being gamed. The reality is that it's arbitrary and capricious. Things may just randomly take 2 years longer for no reason at all. Once your number comes up (more on this below), you go to the next step;

2. File an adjustment of status ("AoS"). There are 2 forms that can be filed concurrently (I-141 and I-485 IIRC). This should only take 6-12 months. It depends on your service center though. If there's something weird about your application it may take longer with multiple rounds of RFE ("Requests for Evidence") that each take months to be examined.

PERMs have a total quota and a per-country quota (of 7% of the total). And by "country" I mean "country of birth". Your passport doesn't matter at all. If you're born to Norwegian parents in Mumbai, you'll be in the India queue and you don't want to be there. Expect to wait 10-30 years because there is a backlog in the millions.

Occasionally there's some talk of Congress reforming this but nothing much has changed in a long time.

So where's the abuse? It takes 2 forms:

1. The Department of Labor is meant to ensure you're not underpaid (ie exploited). But they look at average pay for software engineers in a geographic area. For a Big Tech company, this could be substantially higher. But they don't have to pay you that higher amount technically because you're beholden to the company. If you leave you need to file a new PERM (but you keep your priority date). Still, this might add a year or two; and

2. Oncd you have your green card you don't need work authorization anymore so you can freely take a new job. So if you're from India you're effectively an indentured servant fordecadesbecause of the backlog.

So H1Bs have no per-country quota but green cards do. We issue way more H1Bs to Indian-born workers than we issue green cards to so the queue is only getting longer. Bear in mind tooo that if you're a worker with a spouse and two children you'll need 4 from the quota not 1.

So these bodyshop companies that employ a lot of Indian nationals flood the H1B pipeline. It's why there's a lottery. The companies don't care who does and doesn't get a visa. These are relatively low paying jobs, which in practice have bad conditions. The threat of being fired keepes workers from demanding better pay and conditions let alone leaving.

Was apple engaging in these practices? I have no idea (and certainly no direct knowledge). But that's what PERM abuse looks like.

Honestly, work visas should just automatically convert to a green card after 6 years.

So if you're from India you're effectively an indentured servant for decades because of the backlog.

Honestly, work visas should just automatically convert to a green card after 6 years.

Taking us from an extreme form of indentured servitude to the kind that was commonly practiced in the 18th century. An improvement!

If all their job postings are not actually hiring, then they won’t get any applicants for the jobs that actually are, and then they can use that as evidence that they can’t find in-country candidates.

So basically the only way to find any real job posting is to spam-apply to everything. Is there a service for that?

google’s new service: gResume, designed to solve the tech industry’s problems around recruitment

My company's goal seems to be to hire every Indian south of Hyderabad. I do wonder when Americans are going to wake up and realize these high-paying jobs could be going to them.

Maybe Americans are just terrible at interviewing for these jobs?

Companies complain the H1B program is needed because the talent doesnt exist. Thats just a lie to get cheaper labor.

25 million is chump change to Apple. To whatever extent the practice was deviously purposeful, this ruling only emboldens that urge.

Apple got sued for hiring diversity lol

Regardless of the issue here, I just want to say that I'm glad we put up such high standards for allowing people with skills into this country.

Because if we didn't, we'd have random people just crossing the border at will and living in the country with no repercussions whatsoever.

Oh wait, huh. So, why do we make skilled people prove with mountains of paperwork and credentials that they should be allowed to enter the country?

"Apple agreed to pay up to $25 million in back pay and civil penalties to settle the DOJ allegations."

This is a slap on the wrist.

Should have gotton the corporate death penalty for this.

DOJ press release:https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-25...