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Justice Dept files suit against Facebook for discriminating against U.S. workers

• genericone 6y ago
  Based on what I'm reading, and what I've experienced, I would say a lot of Bay Area companies "[create] a hiring system in which it [denies] qualified U.S. workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs that [the company] instead sought to channel to temporary visa holders [the company] wanted to sponsor for green cards". In some cases, these companies don't want to sponsor the employee for a green-card, but simply are satisfied with the work being done by the visa-holder, and want to continue to pay for that work. The companies don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up.
  • ViViDboarder 6y ago
    This sounds like a broken process.
  • bawolff 6y ago
    > The companies don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up. I can't imagine any sane company would. Hiring people is an expensive process, not to mention the morale hit of essentially firing someone for things out of their control. If i was a company, i too would want to stand by an employee if they were doing a good job.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      > If i was a company, i too would want to stand by an employee if they were doing a good job. Not if it meant violating labor laws, no?
      • bladegash 6y ago
        Also seems like allowing for it to continue would fail to discourage the companies from hiring the employees in the first place, assuming they were initially hired in a discriminatory way.
      • klodolph 6y ago
        I don't think that interpretation offers much insight. Presumably, they want to comply with the law and want to retain their visa holders. Both, at the same time, if possible. Whether they actually do both is a different question.
      • bawolff 6y ago
        Want != will != should. I want to sit on my ass and watch netflix all day. I don't actually sit on my ass and watch netflix all day despite wanting to and technically being able to.
  • claudeganon 6y ago
    It's not limited to the Bay Area. They do the same thing in the Midwest for industries with high-turnover. They use the same, obviously dishonest tactics, like only advertising positions in the classified sections of local newspapers, where no one would ever look for them. I'm fully in favor of immigration (mom is an immigrant and so is my partner), but the H1-B system was obviously designed to create a tier of second-class workers who fear losing their sponsorship and thus tolerate lower wages and worse treatment. These visas need to be fully portable at any time, offered for positions only at above market rates, with greencard queue times also being drastically reduced and made independent of employer sponsorship.
    • nrmitchi 6y ago
      > They use the same, obviously dishonest tactics, like only advertising positions in the classified sections of local newspapers, where no one would ever look for them. As stupid as it sounds, that's not their decision. It is a part of the PERM process that the employer has to follow. I've started in a different comment here, the rules are extremely outdated. I believe the relevant section is §656.17 Basic labor certification process Section (f). (you'll have to google it, I couldn't find a good source with a direct link) It quite literally says "newspapers".
  • chungus_khan 6y ago
    If they don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up, and the employee is being a valuable and productive member of society, that seems like an ideal case for some kind of permanent residency program. Maybe it could involve some kind of colored card? What an absolute mess this whole system is.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• curiousllama 6y ago
  > The complaint also alleges that Facebook sought to channel jobs to temporary visa holders at the expense of U.S. workers by failing to advertise those vacancies on its careers website, requiring applicants to apply by physical mail only, and refusing to consider any U.S. workers who applied for those positions. In contrast, Facebook’s usual hiring process relies on recruitment methods designed to encourage applications by advertising positions on its careers website, accepting electronic applications, and not pre-selecting candidates to be hired based on a candidate’s immigration status, according to the lawsuit. Important to note: the allegations, if true, probably only indirectly impacted you or me. In other words, we all failed our Facebook interviews the good ol fashion way - through incompetence - not unfairness.
  • programmerslave 6y ago
    Not really. H1B immigrants raise the bar on hiring. Often times they are willing to work more hours, study more, etc for a chance to thrive in the USA. This reduces working conditions, effective wages, and employment prospects for Americans.
    • supercanuck 6y ago
      Same thing happening to migrants working farm fields in the USA.
    • nrmitchi 6y ago
      > for a chance to thrive in the USA Or, because they are forced to under threat of deportation. This is only the case because of the un-due power that the H1-B system gives the employer. This un-due power can easily be taken away (by not tying the status directly to the employer, and giving the employee the actual freedom to switch positions). If the employer didn't have effective-deportation power over an employee, then maybe they wouldn't be able to get away with "reduce[d] working conditions, effective wages, and employment prospects for Americans". The enemy here isn't the foreign worker. If you're upset with anyone in this situation it should be an employer that is taking advantage of everyone else involved, and managed to put the blame on someone else.
• belltaco 6y ago
  >Such temporary visa holders often have limited job mobility and thus are likely to remain with their company until they can adjust status, which for some can be decades. They need to fix that and address the root issue rather than force tens of thousands of companies to fire ppl who were working for several years and have a lot of institutional knowlege.
  • whimsicalism 6y ago
    > They need to fix that and address the root issue What does it mean to "address the root issue"? This is a platitude because any "address"-ing will have pretty clear winners & losers.
    • Ericson2314 6y ago
      It's possible to have American and foreign workers be the winners, and the employers be the looses.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      A couple of easy fixes -- one, don't make H1B dependent on the employer. Once you've worked for say, one year, convert it to a general work visa. Two, automatic green-card for anyone who completes a four year degree at an accredited US institution.
      • nrmitchi 6y ago
        1. Definitely agree with that. Even if you keep the same H1-B term (7 years), you now have an EAD (Employment Authorization Document) for those 7 years. 2. I strongly disagree with this one. The end result will be accredited US institutions effectively selling green cards. If you thought tuition was high before this, think about what will happen after these schools can effectively sell permanent residency to the highest bidders (for prices under the EB-5 investment visa cut-offs of course)
        • jedberg 6y ago
• tempsy 6y ago
  Seems like an open secret that tech cos like H1-Bs because they can pay them less and they’ll work hard because the alternative is getting fired and being kicked out of the country. It’s a really backwards system with messed up incentives that probably needs to be reformed.
  • wow_yes 6y ago
    Serfdom. That's what the system is.
  • mlboss 6y ago
    I will disagree with the pay less part. I know people who get > $500K as a software engineer on H1b. Getting worker on H1b requires 1-2 month legal process, lot of paperwork and extra money. I think it is more expensive for companies to hire foreign workers. Some startups straight out reject visa holders since they don't have resources to hire them.
    • cbozeman 6y ago
      They're hiring the kind of person that would command $750,000 a year or more as a native American, then. I have a good friend who was network ops for Riot Games some years back. He is a German who is in America on an H1-B visa. He and I spoke openly about his salary once, which was $97,500. I know Felix is great at his job... but given the experience and knowledge he had, along with the insane responsibilities he was tasked with, I wouldn't have done it for less than $125,000.
      • umanwizard 6y ago
        > They're hiring the kind of person that would command $750,000 a year or more as a native American, then. No, they're not. Facebook employees have very thoroughly reverse-engineered the compensation bands in internal groups. We know for a fact that it makes no difference whether one is on a visa.
        • tempsy 6y ago
• an_opabinia 6y ago
  The divide between US citizen W2 employees and everyone else will define our generation.
• vsskanth 6y ago
  A lot of companies advertise through newspaper to comply with PERM so they can file a green card application. pretty much an open secret. DOJ is finally looking into this now.
• uxp100 6y ago
  The actions described by this seem to cross the line somewhat clearly. But I always wondered about my former employer, who included the normal postings and the postings for H1Bs in the same places, but it was kinda clear which was which. Same hiring manager for all postings no matter the team, and a much vaguer job description. Like a type of role and some technologies to be experienced with instead of “you will work on team A who makes product B.” Probably on the legal side of the line, but I never would have applied for one of the jobs that wasn’t “for” me, why apply for generic Sr SW position when another job you could tell what team it was and talk to people on it.
• lacker 6y ago
  This whole area of law is nonsense. Facebook software engineering doesn’t have “positions”. You don’t apply for some specific role. They are hiring thousands of engineers every year, they hire for general software engineering skills, and you figure out what exactly you’re working on afterwards. Meanwhile, US immigration law assumes that you are hiring one person at a time, and that each person is being hired for a separate “position”. You cannot say, we need 3000 people in this role this year, we have 1000, so we need 2000 more. It ends up just being incoherent. You have to answer questions like “why are you unable to hire an American” and it’s like... well we are. We’re hiring many many Americans.
  • programmerslave 6y ago
    They really don’t hire that many Americans
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • PoignardAzur 6y ago
      You should really elaborate when you make a claim like that.
      • programmerslave 6y ago
        Go look on linked in. Of FB engineers, probably at least 40% are Chinese.
        • PierceJoy 6y ago
          Is this a serious comment? First, skimming Linkedin is hardly an accurate way to see the racial makeup of a company. Second, Facebook has offices all over the world. Third, and most importantly, you know Chinese Americans exist, right?
          • 6y ago
• tomkat0789 6y ago
  It's nice that this is getting some attention, but I hope it results in good policy! Other stories I've bumped into: Trump's executive order - I guess this is now defunct: https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/29/h1b_visa_change/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/29/h1b_visa_change/ US Senate moves to abolish per-country visa caps: https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/03/fairness_for_high_skilled_immigrants_act_passes/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/03/fairness_for_high_ski...
• nrmitchi 6y ago
  > Not only do Facebook’s alleged practices discriminate against U.S. workers, they have adverse consequences on temporary visa holders by creating an employment relationship that is not on equal terms. An employer that engages in the practices alleged in the lawsuit against Facebook can expect more temporary visa holders to apply for positions and increased retention post-hire. Such temporary visa holders often have limited job mobility and thus are likely to remain with their company until they can adjust status, which for some can be decades. I guess it's good that the Justice Department is openly acknowledging that this is a problem. Maybe we'll see if actually get addressed at some point now. That being said it feels like a slightly out-of-place comment when much of this allegation is about hiring for jobs as part of the PERM process. If Facebook is purposely going through the PERM process with these employees, it is actively working to remove those un-equal terms. After the PERM process, the employee is free to leave and not remain with the company until they can adjust status. Yes, the PERM advertising rules are stupid and outdated, but I don't see any evidence here that Facebook didn't follow them. If the Justice Department wants to go after true abuse of the H1-B program, there are significantly-more-legitimate targets (Tata, Infosys, etc). I honestly can't believe that this has made me defend Facebook.
  • _jal 6y ago
    > there are significantly-more-legitimate targets Yeah, this is giving me the feel of a very tailored lawsuit - it is media-friendly, unlikely to be systemically disruptive, and I'd call it extremely likely that it is settled for a press release and no meaningful change. > I honestly can't believe that this has made me defend Facebook. I'm going to go take a shower, too. Also, I wonder what C19 does to H1B visas over the long term. I expect my company to announce permanent WFH at some point, keeping a much smaller physical space for exec meets and whatever. It may well be that the demand for physical presence H1Bs drops significantly in tech firms.
    • r00fus 6y ago
      So a legal/regulatory equivalent of a strawman argument?
    • reader_mode 6y ago
• killjoywashere 6y ago
  I wonder if we tried investing in public education at K-12 level, we might get more capable local workers? Unfortunately, certain political interests find more votes among the under-educated.
  • jedberg 6y ago
    That would certainly help, but math is against us here. Only 4.25% of the world's population lives in the US. It's mathematically impossible for all the best people to already live here.
  • wil421 6y ago
    I think you’re missing the point here. Companies are abusing H1B to find cheap workers who can’t leave. The whole point of H1B is to get smart and talented people to the US.
  • tisu32 6y ago
    You can boost the local education all you want (definitely worth it), you will never to grow locally the large volumes of talent necessary to run a globalized economy. Researchers, highly trained SEs etc are in high demand and there is simply not enough local supply to match.
• ucha 6y ago
  I'm not surprised by this at all. I used to work in the US at at a large international bank with headquarters overseas that preferred having employees from the same country as HQ. We would advertise a position, internally or just to alumni networks of unis there. Once we interviewed people and knew who we wanted to hire, there would be a delay because HR would have to advertise the position publicly for at least a week (or two, I forgot), and then we could proceed officially with the hire.
• gt565k 6y ago
  H1B's should be reserved for subject matter experts, innovators, field experts - as opposed to every shmuck with a masters or bs degree in CS or engineering. All those consulting firms like Tata Consulting Services are gaming the H1B process, middle manning the employees, and in result Facebook, Home Depot, and others hire them for 1/3 or 1/2 less.
  • airstrike 6y ago
    How about highly trained individuals who are willing to do high-paying work for which it is hard to find US workers? Doesn't really match any of {subject matter experts, innovators, field experts} I'm talking lawyers and bankers and whatever else you want to throw in the mix
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • ra7 6y ago
    > in result Facebook, Home Depot, and others hire them for 1/3 or 1/2 less. One of these is not like the other. Facebook pays extremely well even for H1Bs, not many come close to it in the industry.
    • lazyasciiart 6y ago
      These people are not paid by Facebook, but by Tata - they are contractors.
      • ra7 6y ago
        This article is about Facebook hiring H1Bs as full time employees. You can't sponsor green card for your contractors. Also Facebook doesn't hire a lot of contractors compared to other big tech companies.
        • lazyasciiart 6y ago
• renewiltord 6y ago
  Immigrants considering software unions, look about this thread. You see what people are saying. You can see what they think about you. This is normal. This is how they feel about you. The unions are weak now and full of bleeding hearts who probably do care. But when they cover a representative fraction of software engineers, this is what it will look like. You will stand at a union all-hands and you will look around you and it will look like this, having reverted to the mean. If you subsume your individual self into the whole, you are then subject to where the whole goes. Read this thread. This is where the whole goes. Semper Vigilo.
  • myhf 6y ago
    > This is how is they feel about you. What are you trying to say? That commenters here don't like how immigrant workers can be forced to overwork?
    • renewiltord 6y ago
      Indeed, and I want the immigrant workers to be aware of how their prospective comrades in unions propose to solve this overwork problem. Fortunately, the raw data is right here, and I trust them to read it and draw the conclusions that they naturally must. All I'm doing is pointing them at the data and telling them the data is here.
  • strken 6y ago
    As someone who recently worked in the US on an E-3, the opinions of the people in this thread are really not that bad. They're wrong, of course - companies who hand out $500k/yr to US workers don't underpay visa holders doing the same role. The reason high paying tech companies go international is because their US recruitment funnel is drying up to the point where it's cost-effective to recruit internationally even with the increased overhead. They're not underpaying visa holders, they're using them to avoid increasing domestic wages even higher or lowering their hiring standards, which are different things altogether.
    • renewiltord 6y ago
• darth_avocado 6y ago
  I think what people are missing here is that this lawsuit is not about hiring foreign workers over US workers, it's about circumventing the PERM process. The PERM process is a bit outdated and requires you to advertise for the same position that a person is already hired for and has been working in, to prove that there isn't another person who can take up the job. It is a flawed process because even though the process is to prove that the person is filling gaps in the labor market, it doesn't fully capture that. Say you have 10000 infrastructure engineers in the market that are US citizens and there are 15000 job openings, if you advertise a job opening, you'll always have candidates who are basically switching jobs and therefore according to the PERM requirements, you can't hire foreign workers. But in reality you still need to fill 5000 jobs. So to compensate for that a lot of companies, follow the process which requires you put a job posting in print media and collect applications via mail, but don't go the extra mile to post online. Because they already have the candidate working in their company, and they need to prove that they are worthy of the job. FB isn't to blame here tbh, it's the immigration laws that were drafted decades ago. I bet FB walks free of this one.
• scottmcleod 6y ago
  Not surprised
• think814 6y ago
  I am someone who went through (fully legal) immigration hell while building a company that in the end, employed 100s of US workers and had global competition (meaning, if we didn't do it in the US the jobs would probably go to some other country). Here's my conclusion from this experience: if you are in a business that depends on Intellectual Property competes globally (i.e. not a nail salon hiring local workers), then in the area that gives you your competitve advantage YOU NEED TO HIRE THE BEST GLOBAL TALENT. Period. If the immigration system doesn't allow that, then either you'll hire remote, or you'll be beaten by an international competitor with more liberal skilled immigration rules. Neither is a great outcome. There are simple ways to ensure H1-B is used to hire this type of talent. The recent rules that prioritize H1-B applicants based on their salary are positive IMO and address a lot of the Tata/Infosys abuse (which is real). If you are truly going after the best global talent, that won't be cheap! H1-B is super old school. The notion is that you only hire someone in H1-B if there's nobody that can do the job. However, the challenge today is not if you can do the job, but can you do it better than the global competitors? That concept is super foreign to immigration legislation (no pun intended :). Short of a whole new immigration framework, increasing the number of H1-Bs and prioritizing based on salary would be a good short term fix - no lawsuits needed.
  • nrmitchi 6y ago
    > prioritizing based on salary would be a good short term fix You have to remember that H1-Bs are used for many occupations and industries outside of tech. Prioritizing by salary only effectively means that 99% of all H1-Bs would go to 3-4 large companies. Yes, nurses, doctors, etc may not get paid as much as a FAANG engineer a couple of years out of college, but they are still often needed. I think that if you want to prioritize by salary within industries that could potentially work, but then you're bordering on a "new immigration framework".
    • paxys 6y ago
      > Yes, nurses, doctors, etc may not get paid as much as a FAANG engineer a couple of years out of college, but they are still often needed. Doesn't that mean nurses, doctors etc. should be paid more, rather than the reverse?
• tisu32 6y ago
  An easy way to solve this issue would be to just liberalize the whole immigration process: for e.g. software development, research and any technical field, make it equally easy to hire either Americans or foreigners (whichever person is best for the role) on the basis of competence only. That would make the process more fair both to Americans and non-nationals and would ensure the best person for the job gets retained, rather than either the one lucky enough to be born on one side of an imaginary line, or the foreigner who might be hired simply because cheaper/harder to leave company.
  • Veen 6y ago
    It is not the job of the US Government to ensure "the best person for the job gets retained" or "the process is more fair to non-nationals". Its primary goal is to do whatever is in the best interests of US citizens and the United States. It's possible to argue that it fails to achieve its primary goal, but unreasonable to expect it to prioritize employment opportunities for citizens of other countries.
    • tisu32 6y ago
      My point is not that the US should act directly in the interests of citizens of other countries. My point is instead that the US should act in its own interests. The US is a successful country today in large part due to its companies (a large part of which were founded/co-founded by migrants e.g. Google). If the US gives priority to mediocre locals versus good internationals, companies will have access to a weaker talent pool and suffer. Of course, I'm of course not saying internationals are always better than US candidates (in the obvious case where an American is better than the competition, hire them by all means). Would you rather a weaker economy but mediocre people get protected, or the less xenophobic approach: a stronger economy and more competition?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• pavlov 6y ago
  Interesting, a Justice Department lawsuit that specifically targets me! (This hopefully won't happen again very soon.) I work for Facebook in the US on an L-1 visa. I'm currently in the process of applying for permanent residence (green card) through the PERM process targeted here. The Justice Dept seems upset that Facebook doesn't advertise my job on the careers website. The reason is very simple: FB doesn't want to hire someone else for this job. They're doing the PERM process because they want to keep me. I know I'm not underpaid compared to my peers. I'm fairly high level and came to FB through an acquisition. I have deep knowledge and ownership of a very specific piece of the tech stack. It seems bizarre for the Justice Dept to argue that FB should just throw away their investment in me and hire an American instead. How would that help the USA?
  • lazyasciiart 6y ago
    L1 jobs explicitly don't need to be advertised because there is no requirement to show that no Americans were able to be hired. This lawsuit doesn't target you.
    • pavlov 6y ago
      That's curious because the agency that does these PERM applications on FB's behalf told me that they're doing the recruitment process and asked me for paperwork related to that. Maybe they were confused about my type of visa.
      • lazyasciiart 6y ago
        If you are on an L1a then you should be going for an EB1 and that is unnecessary. If you are on an L1b then you are probably going for an EB2 and that application does require a PERM. But neither type requires one to bring you to the US in the first place. https://www.path2usa.com/l1a-vs-l1b-visa https://www.path2usa.com/l1a-vs-l1b-visa
  • jacobriis 6y ago
    "The reason is very simple: FB doesn't want to hire someone else for this job. They're doing the PERM process because they want to keep me." It may seem bizarre to you, but that is exactly what the law requires. You're confirming that the DoJ allegations are true. Don't be shocked if Facebook lawyers don't make the argument that actually breaking this law "helps the USA".
• munk-a 6y ago
  I'm quite afraid the timing of this filing will allow Dems to kill this off when Biden takes office without taking any political damage due solely to the association with the current administration. As someone who leans Dem that would be quite tragic.
• jlj 6y ago
  Seems like very low hanging fruit compared to anti-trust. A nice perk of being government funded through in-q-tel. They will settle and write a small check while admitting no wrongdoing.
• rendall 6y ago
  So many questions. Is there incentive to hire a citizen over an H1-B resident? It seems like an H1-B is an advantage to a company in every way. Will the Biden administration drop the lawsuit after the transition? Will this lawsuit be considered when Facebook applies for more H1-B visas on behalf of immigrants?