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Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

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Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#41

Post by outworlder »

jmwilson wrote: post #20

An earlier article has a bit more description of the complaint: https://archive.md/67DiB For those curious about how this works, the company has to show it tried and couldn't hire a US resident, but they don't have to try very hard... so the company posts a brief job opening in a local newspaper. When nobody responds, because it's the newspaper, tada! Proof there was no American-based talent capable of filling the jo…

> a brief job opening in a local newspaper

Not just a brief job opening and it is not just one. It has to be posted twice and there are further requirements, can't just be a footnote.

In addition, they have to post the job offers in a board visible in the company.

This is part of the PERM process, which is step 1 out of 3.

If you are complaining about the 'newspaper' thing, that's why immigration reform is needed. You can guess how old the regulations are.

EDIT: https://www.immi-usa.com/perm/perm-advertising-requirements/

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#42

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Jensson wrote: post #37
kfprt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want a low unemployment rate so I can pay less in taxes due to the costs of welfare.

High skill immigrants are net pay tax payers, they help reduce the need to tax you.

If a job is so hard to find that a company needs to find foreign talent to fill it, then it should pay WAY higher than the market average. That isn't what happens the vast majority of the time.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#43

Post by darth_avocado »

It’s a relic of a broken process. If you want to keep a foreign worker beyond 6 years, you can’t do that without applying for a greencard which in turn requires you to prove you don’t have a US citizen vying for the job, which should make sense.

However the problem here is that the government instead of keeping a track of the country’s labor needs, outsourced this responsibility to the companies and that’s where the problem lies. Think of this for a second. Imagine there’s 10k jobs for infrastructure engineering in the market, but only 9k US citizens filing those roles. The companies then fill those 1k jobs with foreigners. But to keep them beyond 6 years, they need to prove the foreigners that they have already on the payroll for years are irreplaceable and that proof for the government is in the form that no other candidate fits that criteria, which is ridiculous. The job market is always transient and there are always people applying, but that doesn’t mean there are enough people and that’s the paradox.

As a result, companies to keep people beyond 6 years, instead try to make sure they advertise the position as less as possible to quickly establish that they can keep their talent. A lot of this talent costs more money to the company than us citizens because of the additional hassle of immigration (mind you this is different from H1B and this is not visa specific). Truly speaking it’s less of companies abusing the system and more of companies trying to work with a broken system.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#44

Post by bifrost »

Jensson wrote: post #37
kfprt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want a low unemployment rate so I can pay less in taxes due to the costs of welfare.

High skill immigrants are net pay tax payers, they help reduce the need to tax you.

Eh, people paying taxes are not why taxes are high nor why they get raised regularly for no good reason...

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#45

Post by kfprt »

Jensson wrote: post #37
kfprt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want a low unemployment rate so I can pay less in taxes due to the costs of welfare.

High skill immigrants are net pay tax payers, they help reduce the need to tax you.

That's not what I'm saying. If a company hires a foreigner instead of an American then that American doesn't have a job. If they don't have a job they are unemployed. If they are unemployed then they are a net cost to me the taxpayer. If we reduce unemployment we reduce the tax burden.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#46

Post by outworlder »

spamizbad wrote: post #34
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a requirement in the US just for the initial hire, or do you also need to do the same when turning temporary position into a permanent one so your employee has a reason to apply for permanent residence, too?

My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts. The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years. Surprised Facebook does this as they certainly have no issue paying domestic employees top dollar.

> My understanding is its only before you can sponsor a visa. H1 transfers do not require such efforts.

What do you mean H1 transfers?

You need to prove that there are no US citizens able to fill the role before you sponsor a H1 visa. You also need to do the same thing again (only much more detailed, including prevailing wage determination yada yada) before you can sponsor for permanent residency.

L1 (intra-company transfers) also require proving that there are no better candidates (in the US company) that can do the same job. Including specifying all the skills and how many people you employ in the US that have those skills.

> The other way companies do this: creating job ads that look impossible to fill by requiring 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been around for 2 years.

If this is true (it probably isn't) why haven't you notified the Department of Labor and USCIS? They will be very interested.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#47

Post by Zigurd »

jmwilson wrote: post #20

An earlier article has a bit more description of the complaint: https://archive.md/67DiB For those curious about how this works, the company has to show it tried and couldn't hire a US resident, but they don't have to try very hard... so the company posts a brief job opening in a local newspaper. When nobody responds, because it's the newspaper, tada! Proof there was no American-based talent capable of filling the jo…

The letter of the H1-B requirements is very reasonable. If you are a first tier tech company, you should have no reason to run the same visa playbook as lower-tier "body shops." It's not a good look and it's not saving them much money.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#48

Post by kfprt »

JadeNB wrote: post #35
kfprt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you talking about the ridiculously expensive universities(and higher education in general)? Maybe fix that? Interesting question that. I think the issue is that corporations realized training employees was a cost center and decided to outsource as much of it as possible to, as you said, ridiculously expensive universities. Of course no general education could ever be perfectly aligned with the individual needs o…

> I think the issue is that corporations realized training employees was a cost center and decided to outsource as much of it as possible to, as you said, ridiculously expensive universities. As a university professor, hoo boy is that a bad bet. I have a lot of goals in the classroom, but training future employees is not one of them; and, despite the corporatist mindset of my (and I suspect most) university's adminis…

Yeah, it's a bad fit. Doesn't mean that wasn't the corporate intent.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#49

Post by a-and »

In this thread there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding both the Permanent/Temporary visa distinction, as well as what Facebook did.

The lawsuit refers to the Permanent Labor Certification process - the process of certifying that a position cannot be filled by a US citizen. This is one of the first early steps of an employer sponsoring an employee for a Green Card (so called immigrant visas, not H1-B). In the overwhelming majority of cases this affects people already employed by the company often on non-immigrant visas (such as the H1-B) which it would like to retain. They have already gone through the much demonized H1 visa process.

Onto the process - the "newspaper" reference which some commenters have been hung up on is a DoL requirement. It's literally Facebook going by the book and filling all requirements. Where the lawsuit comes in is that Facebook only followed the DoL requirements and did not advertise positions how they would beyond that.

Additionally the article itself states

> When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker.

Is this discrimination? Yes. Is there a better pathway to retain foreign employees? Not currently. I'm not a fan of Facebook at all, but they do what they need to to keep talent in a competitive environment.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#50

Post by avasylev »

outworlder wrote: post #30
avasylev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's only the case if company intentionally delays application process for green card, which usually takes 1.5 year (unless applicant is form the country that hit the per-country limit, like India). 1.5 year "guaranteed" retention is not that significant to deal with visas/GC. Companies that do intentionally delay the GC process, that's different story, they can stretch the application for many years and have lever…

> which usually takes 1.5 year In my experience it takes WAY longer than that, just on processing times. As in, I've never even heard of anyone getting permanent residency that quickly, at least for employment-based. If you are talking about marriage or family-based, sure. Any audits or RFEs during the process and you are looking easily at twice the time you quoted. Probably even more - given the recent delays in the…

Employment based (EB2) and i know many people who's process took similar ~1.5 year plus/minus couple month. Though that's been about 5 years ago, haven't kept up since going thru it myself. No RFEs/audits, they where not common back then at least.
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