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> Not only do Facebook’s alleged practices discriminate against U.S. workers, they have adverse consequences on temporary visa holders by creating an employment

> 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 Yes, the PERM advertising rules are stupid and outdated, but I don't see any evidence here that Facebook didn't follow them.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
  >It may well be that the demand for physical presence H1Bs drops significantly in tech firms. Even if you're not required to be physically present there's still value in being under the same legal system - good luck enforcing NDA/IP ownership on an employee you never met from a random country across the world with a different legal system and different employment laws. Also employee retention is even harder in that scenario (the opposite of H1B scenario where you basically capture the employee). I say this as someone who's freelancing for US clients from Eastern Europe - the only model I saw working for non-trivial stuff is opening offshore offices with a dedicated team/staff/etc. - but then you're dealing with plain old offshoring C19 probably makes this harder because travel is harder and you probably want to fly key people to set things up properly. There are full remote companies like GitLab but most of their stuff is OSS anyway and their core product is not very innovation based (something that needs IP/NDA protection), this kind of work was getting outsourced/offshored full speed even before C19.
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    > Even if you're not required to be physically present there's still value in being under the same legal system I mean, sure, ya, there is value. Unfortunately it's not really the kind of value that USCIS cares about when it comes to work authorization. > There are full remote companies like GitLab Gitlab is not a US-based company anyways, and does not do any US visa sponsorship. Also, claiming that their work isn't innovative and is therefore getting off-shored kind of discounts the work of everyone working there.
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      GitLab is just the first example that came to mind when thinking of a company that's loud about it's "remote first" approach. There's nothing revolutionary done at GitLab that could leak to competitors, maybe you could compromise their infrastructure to cause damage, but at the end of the day it's yet another app doing a thing that's already been done with the tech everyone already has using methods everyone understands. Compare that to self driving, robotics, biotech, weapons, etc. - governments and large corporations are hiring spies to steal this stuff - I doubt you get to work on cutting edge R&D related stuff as a remote worker from a different country.
unishark 6y ago
> 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. I think they meant the special PERM "benefit" for employees is used as a carrot to attract temporary workers who may or may not ever get it themselves. You can't leave because you'd lose your advantaged insider status.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  I may be misunderstanding, but if you are alleging that Facebook is "promising" foreign workers that it will go through the PERM process with them, and then reneging on that "promise" once they are hired in order to prevent them from quitting I have seen 0 evidence of that, not is that what is being alleged. If you are saying that "not all H1-B workers go through the PERM process and get permanent residency", then yes, that's how it works, and is not at all unique to Facebook. And H1-B is not, and is not meant to be, a guaranteed path to a green card.
- safog 6y ago
  I don't know what you mean but to add additional context, the PERM process takes ~1 year and the employee is free to leave before / during / after the process. It is not exceptionally hard as an employee on a H1 to have an employer sponsor PERM for you, most (90+%?) employers do it, so it's not an added draw towards Facebook if they do sponsor the PERM / GC. If they leave after the PERM + I-140 have been approved, companies have a limited period of time to revoke the I-140 but this is extremely rare and won't happen unless the employee has really burned their bridges. Six months (afaik) after the I-140 has been approved, the company can no longer do anything about it, the employee can leave without any immigration related ramifications.
  - ohhhwell 6y ago
    Yeah, this is true, but there are also people on L1 visa which are tied to the company all the way until GC. Also worth adding that interviews or hires from the PERM process would significantly add to length of the PERM process, if I remember correctly.
geofft 6y ago
If the Justice Department wants to go after true abuse of the H-1B system, they should issue a press release saying that the unequal terms are fundamentally unjust for workers and therefore unavoidably appealing to employers and they refuse to prosecute mistreatment of non-H-1B workers until Congress acts to address this, because they see it as a waste of resources to dissuade companies from doing something so absurdly rational.
sjg007 6y ago
What are the rules on advertising jobs? In the past, I've seen positions notified internally on a pin up board in the lunchroom. Apparently there is some law that requires that. I wonder if that's the bare minimum or if jobs have to be notified online now. I know a lot of legal things have to be notified in newspapers for example. This is usually the print edition which have less subscribers these days. But now that companies are fully remote, how are you supposed to be notified of pending H1B, jobs etc... ? It seems like an interesting question!
- lacker 6y ago
  Facebook hires H1-B software engineers for the same jobs that it hires Americans. You can find them on Facebook's career page: https://www.facebook.com/careers/areas-of-work/engineering/?p[teams][0]=Software%20Engineering&teams[0]=Software%20Engineering#openpositions https://www.facebook.com/careers/areas-of-work/engineering/?... Almost any job that an H1-B is getting hired for at Facebook, an American can apply for that same job by just going through the standard application process.
  - clusterhacks 6y ago
    FTA: "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."
    - sjg007 6y ago
      Yeah the "channeling" of jobs seems to be the big issue as well as blanket disregard for American applicants.
    - trhway 6y ago
      That just doesn't jive with my experience and what I anecdotally have heard about FB in SV at least. I'm a US worker for example (GC), no any public visibility/reputation in the industry, just a regular cog at a regular BigCo, and FB recruiters are going out of their way to reach. The JD should instead go after real offenders like Accenture, Tata, IBM, etc. As a former H1 myself I do know what H1 system abuse looks and smells like.
ianmobbs 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. > > In its investigation, the department determined that Facebook’s ineffective recruitment methods dissuaded U.S. workers from applying to its PERM positions. The department concluded that, during the relevant period, Facebook received zero or one U.S. worker applicants for 99.7 percent of its PERM positions, while comparable positions at Facebook that were advertised on its careers website during a similar time period typically attracted 100 or more applicants each. These U.S. workers were denied an opportunity to be considered for the jobs Facebook sought to channel to temporary visa holders, according to the lawsuit. Facebook was not actively working to remove those un-equal terms. They set up a separate, physical-mail only pipeline for these candidates, and denied any US Citizens who applied using the obscure pipeline.

_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
>It may well be that the demand for physical presence H1Bs drops significantly in tech firms. Even if you're not required to be physically present there's still value in being under the same legal system - good luck enforcing NDA/IP ownership on an employee you never met from a random country across the world with a different legal system and different employment laws. Also employee retention is even harder in that scenario (the opposite of H1B scenario where you basically capture the employee). I say this as someone who's freelancing for US clients from Eastern Europe - the only model I saw working for non-trivial stuff is opening offshore offices with a dedicated team/staff/etc. - but then you're dealing with plain old offshoring C19 probably makes this harder because travel is harder and you probably want to fly key people to set things up properly. There are full remote companies like GitLab but most of their stuff is OSS anyway and their core product is not very innovation based (something that needs IP/NDA protection), this kind of work was getting outsourced/offshored full speed even before C19.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  > Even if you're not required to be physically present there's still value in being under the same legal system I mean, sure, ya, there is value. Unfortunately it's not really the kind of value that USCIS cares about when it comes to work authorization. > There are full remote companies like GitLab Gitlab is not a US-based company anyways, and does not do any US visa sponsorship. Also, claiming that their work isn't innovative and is therefore getting off-shored kind of discounts the work of everyone working there.
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    GitLab is just the first example that came to mind when thinking of a company that's loud about it's "remote first" approach. There's nothing revolutionary done at GitLab that could leak to competitors, maybe you could compromise their infrastructure to cause damage, but at the end of the day it's yet another app doing a thing that's already been done with the tech everyone already has using methods everyone understands. Compare that to self driving, robotics, biotech, weapons, etc. - governments and large corporations are hiring spies to steal this stuff - I doubt you get to work on cutting edge R&D related stuff as a remote worker from a different country.

unishark 6y ago

> 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. I think they meant the special PERM "benefit" for employees is used as a carrot to attract temporary workers who may or may not ever get it themselves. You can't leave because you'd lose your advantaged insider status.

nrmitchi 6y ago
I may be misunderstanding, but if you are alleging that Facebook is "promising" foreign workers that it will go through the PERM process with them, and then reneging on that "promise" once they are hired in order to prevent them from quitting I have seen 0 evidence of that, not is that what is being alleged. If you are saying that "not all H1-B workers go through the PERM process and get permanent residency", then yes, that's how it works, and is not at all unique to Facebook. And H1-B is not, and is not meant to be, a guaranteed path to a green card.
safog 6y ago
I don't know what you mean but to add additional context, the PERM process takes ~1 year and the employee is free to leave before / during / after the process. It is not exceptionally hard as an employee on a H1 to have an employer sponsor PERM for you, most (90+%?) employers do it, so it's not an added draw towards Facebook if they do sponsor the PERM / GC. If they leave after the PERM + I-140 have been approved, companies have a limited period of time to revoke the I-140 but this is extremely rare and won't happen unless the employee has really burned their bridges. Six months (afaik) after the I-140 has been approved, the company can no longer do anything about it, the employee can leave without any immigration related ramifications.
- ohhhwell 6y ago
  Yeah, this is true, but there are also people on L1 visa which are tied to the company all the way until GC. Also worth adding that interviews or hires from the PERM process would significantly add to length of the PERM process, if I remember correctly.

geofft 6y ago

If the Justice Department wants to go after true abuse of the H-1B system, they should issue a press release saying that the unequal terms are fundamentally unjust for workers and therefore unavoidably appealing to employers and they refuse to prosecute mistreatment of non-H-1B workers until Congress acts to address this, because they see it as a waste of resources to dissuade companies from doing something so absurdly rational.

sjg007 6y ago

What are the rules on advertising jobs? In the past, I've seen positions notified internally on a pin up board in the lunchroom. Apparently there is some law that requires that. I wonder if that's the bare minimum or if jobs have to be notified online now. I know a lot of legal things have to be notified in newspapers for example. This is usually the print edition which have less subscribers these days. But now that companies are fully remote, how are you supposed to be notified of pending H1B, jobs etc... ? It seems like an interesting question!

lacker 6y ago
Facebook hires H1-B software engineers for the same jobs that it hires Americans. You can find them on Facebook's career page: https://www.facebook.com/careers/areas-of-work/engineering/?p[teams][0]=Software%20Engineering&teams[0]=Software%20Engineering#openpositions https://www.facebook.com/careers/areas-of-work/engineering/?... Almost any job that an H1-B is getting hired for at Facebook, an American can apply for that same job by just going through the standard application process.
- clusterhacks 6y ago
  FTA: "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."
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Yeah the "channeling" of jobs seems to be the big issue as well as blanket disregard for American applicants.
  - trhway 6y ago
    That just doesn't jive with my experience and what I anecdotally have heard about FB in SV at least. I'm a US worker for example (GC), no any public visibility/reputation in the industry, just a regular cog at a regular BigCo, and FB recruiters are going out of their way to reach. The JD should instead go after real offenders like Accenture, Tata, IBM, etc. As a former H1 myself I do know what H1 system abuse looks and smells like.

ianmobbs 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. > > In its investigation, the department determined that Facebook’s ineffective recruitment methods dissuaded U.S. workers from applying to its PERM positions. The department concluded that, during the relevant period, Facebook received zero or one U.S. worker applicants for 99.7 percent of its PERM positions, while comparable positions at Facebook that were advertised on its careers website during a similar time period typically attracted 100 or more applicants each. These U.S. workers were denied an opportunity to be considered for the jobs Facebook sought to channel to temporary visa holders, according to the lawsuit. Facebook was not actively working to remove those un-equal terms. They set up a separate, physical-mail only pipeline for these candidates, and denied any US Citizens who applied using the obscure pipeline.