Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#531

Post by lazide » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #478

js2 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During WWII there were wage freezes so employers started providing benefits: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th... > In 1942, with so many eligible workers diverted to military service, the nation was facing a severe labor shortage. Economists feared that businesses would keep raising salaries to compete for workers, and that inflation would spiral out of control as the country came out of t…

Hysterical raisin?

I thought it was a play on ‘grapes of wrath’

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#532

Post by pandaman » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:35 PM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #510

pandaman wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Company has to make a good faith recruitment effort. Yes. And as the topical article and countless other ones state - they don't. They actively obfuscate their job openings so they do know they act against the law. And it's so easy to observe that their "good lawyers" cannot help here. >The government doesn't believe that it can win on the merits, and hence they settle. That's just, like, your opinion, dude.

>That's just, like, your opinion, dude. That's the official opinion of the government, the judiciary, and the defendants. A settlement is not admission of guilt - the opposite actually. What are we even debating here ? > "good lawyers" cannot help here A settlement for a pittance, as you said, is the mark of a good lawyer.

>That's the official opinion of the government, the judiciary, and the defendants.

If it has been an official opinion it would have been published and you had a link to it, would not you? Settlement is not an admission of guilt nor is it admission that the case can't be won on merit.

>A settlement for a pittance, as you said, is the mark of a good lawyer.

Different lawyer handle DOJ prosecution and immigration (immigration lawyers are usually not even members of BAR). The government settles this kind of cases because of politics, not merit. If there had been a modicum of will to go after lawbreakers, these cases would try themselves - tons of witnesses, tons of evidence zero traces of "good faith".

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#533

Post by otterley » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:59 PM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #527

thephyber wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conflates high education specialists with high earnings. It’s probably not completely uncorrelated, but only giving H1-Bs to the highest paying reqs which need them starves all of the other reqs of any possible candidates. I understand that H1-Bs are currently likely to create an abusive relationship with the visa-ed employee, but just because you have identified a valid diagnosis doesn’t mean your suggested pre…

If you have a high skill role and aren't willing to pay for those skills, it's natural you have a "shortage of workers". But, the problem is just the pay. The normal fix for companies that can't afford to hire, is to let them go broke.

What if there are 100 people for a job and there are only 50 qualified workers in the country? (Assume the constraints in this hypothetical are true.) There is no amount of money the employers can pay to reach equilibrium.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#534

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 11:05 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #422

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can only stay in the country if you're sponsored by an employer" creates an environment where workers have low bargaining power, decreasing the pressure for good working conditions (e.g. high pay), which – among other things – has impacts on the working conditions for locals. One might say it "affects what the market will sustain" (personally, I don't think calling everything a "market" is insightful). From a pu…

From an economic perspective the ideal is no borders if there are no significant differences between countries that would create an infinite surge in mobility. It's like electrical current, if there is zero resistance and a difference in potential, any short circuit will potentially destroy the entire circuit.

The "infinite surge in mobility" phenomenon only occurs if we model countries as infinite sources / sinks of people, and assume population movement has no impact on either country. Given both of these assumptions, the predicted phenomenon wouldn't cause any problems. Of course, neither assumption holds in real life; and if you re-do your models with more sensible assumptions, the phenomenon goes away.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#535

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #308

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> toss 170 billion to one of your various police forces so you’ve got the manpower to tamp down any tantrums from the people I am missing your argument. Moreno’s bill pumps money out of the poor into the pockets of the wealthy. I am wealthy. I would benefit from his bill. My point is the exercise is a red herring. (I am not sure what yours is.)

Sorry, I was making an oblique reference to the part of the OBBB that increased ICE’s budget to 170 billion. My point was that I think the powers at be agree with you that this playbook is unstable and are preparing for that eventuality

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Blowing the deficit so idiots can play cowboys and Indians is dumb. So is creating stupid barriers to doing business in America, barriers trivially circumvented with capital and connections.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#536

Post by cs_throwaway » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 11:59 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #202

A lot of these problems could be solved if H1-B's were given out in order of salary (I think there's such a proposal going around recently). And by that I mean: something like a Dutch auction. Give H1-Bs to the top 85K paying jobs (maybe normalized to SoL in the region, I'm sure the BLS has some idea on how to do it). The lure of H1-Bs is the money savings, and the fact that if you're on an H1-B, you're practically a…

> It used to be that if you lost your job as an H1-B, you had 30 days to uproot your life and get out of the US otherwise you'd be in violation of immigration laws.

This is still true, right?

Overall, the only hard requirement of the H1B seems to be "can you hold down a job 100% of the time, until you choose to depart or receive a green card?" It is quite hard to think of other requirements that are possible to implement at scale, but I do wonder.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#537

Post by me-vs-cat » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 12:11 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #387

lumost wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting that the U.S. picked an employer-driven model, which effectively outsources immigration selection to firms. That’s efficient for demand-matching, but it concentrates bargaining power in ways that a points-based model avoids. The practical effect of an H1-B is to act as a non-compete, punitive termination clause, and a time bounded employment contract. These are very expensive terms to ask for in conv…

But it's not like if the employee gets nothing out of this bargain. The company in exchange sponsors the visa. It's not unreasonable that they get a minimum number of years of work from the employee in exchange.

Are you describing H-1B or indentured servitude?

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#538

Post by bubblethink » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #532

bubblethink wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just, like, your opinion, dude. That's the official opinion of the government, the judiciary, and the defendants. A settlement is not admission of guilt - the opposite actually. What are we even debating here ? > "good lawyers" cannot help here A settlement for a pittance, as you said, is the mark of a good lawyer.

>That's the official opinion of the government, the judiciary, and the defendants. If it has been an official opinion it would have been published and you had a link to it, would not you? Settlement is not an admission of guilt nor is it admission that the case can't be won on merit. >A settlement for a pittance, as you said, is the mark of a good lawyer. Different lawyer handle DOJ prosecution and immigration (immig…

> The government settles this kind of cases because of politics, not merit.

The government also files these cases in the first place because of politics, not merit. See my point about theater earlier.

>If there had been a modicum of will to go after lawbreakers, these cases would try themselves - tons of witnesses, tons of evidence zero traces of "good faith".

That's just like, your opinion, dude.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#539

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #272

tomhow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I understand where you're coming from. Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it. My perception from moderating HN for years is that there is generally much more criticism toward companies (including/especially Silicon Valley compa…

Thanks for the kinds words and being open to listen to my feedback! > Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it. Absolutely and no argument there > But if you see evidence that contradicts that (i.e., comments that are unkind towards visa-holders or that discuss them…

[deleted]

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#540

Post by pandaman » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #538

pandaman wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's the official opinion of the government, the judiciary, and the defendants. If it has been an official opinion it would have been published and you had a link to it, would not you? Settlement is not an admission of guilt nor is it admission that the case can't be won on merit. >A settlement for a pittance, as you said, is the mark of a good lawyer. Different lawyer handle DOJ prosecution and immigration (immig…

> The government settles this kind of cases because of politics, not merit. The government also files these cases in the first place because of politics, not merit. See my point about theater earlier. >If there had been a modicum of will to go after lawbreakers, these cases would try themselves - tons of witnesses, tons of evidence zero traces of "good faith". That's just like, your opinion, dude.

>The government also files these cases in the first place because of politics, not merit. See my point about theater earlier.

Yeah, a completely different case by a different organization means this case is also political... I don't really know what to say at this point. You seem to be arguing on random tangents without touching the issue of this HN item: companies obfuscating job adverts for the positions involved in PERM. For all I know you might not even know what does "good faith" mean and truly think it's a good faith behavior so you are more interested in discussing random stuff. I am sorry that I am not.