4 ms·

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 r

by a-and 5y ago

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.

joshka 5y ago
> > 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. It's fairly common practice to hire for the expertise and fit for the position. How is this different in that regard?
a-and 5y ago
To add - when this process fails, tech companies rotate employees out to a remote office (often in Canada). The US loses tax money which the employee would have paid and the position remains filled.
JPKab 5y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you on your comment at all, but the "much demonized H1 process" was legitimately abused by a lot of bad actors who violated the spirit of the visa (talent you can't find in US) in pursuit of simply using it to hire at a lower rate a captive employee who you can freely exploit. I was at a company that abused it, and we were hiring DBAs whose entire job was to administer MS SQL server. There were plenty of people locally who could do this, but none who were willing to work 70 hours a week for the very average salary. The US government wasn't even sharing any data on the visas publicly until the Trump administration forced them. Once the data was public, it was blatantly obvious as to why they hadn't shared the data before. Wipro, Cognizant, etc were hogging the H1Bs for labor arbitrage purposes, making it hard for people looking for actual rare talent to get anyone in country. I had a friend from Pune who was stuck waiting in India for 2 years (an amazingly talented ML engineer) due to us not being able to get him a visa while Wipro was stealing them all in the same region for their labor arbitrage business.
lacker 5y ago
When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. For what it's worth, as an ex-FB engineering manager, this isn't how Facebook works at all. 99% of software engineers are not hired into an "open position". Facebook hires all software engineers that pass the hiring process without regard to whether they are US citizens or not. Then, after starting work for Facebook, there is a trial period where software engineers figure out what team they are going to work for, usually working a bit on a few different teams. Unfortunately, immigration law seems to be written by people who had no familiarity with how modern large software engineering companies operate. Tech companies are essentially forced to make up "positions" for the purposes of immigration law. This makes the law pointless, except for the occasional fine for not obeying the meaningless rules precisely enough, which is just the cost of doing business. There is just no way to make a company "first consider US citizens for every open job" when you don't hire one person at a time for separate jobs. What does that even mean when you are trying to hire 100 people a week, and you just want to hire the 100 best people you can find every week? This law fundamentally has an incoherent goal.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  > What does that even mean when you are trying to hire 100 people a week, and you just want to hire the 100 best people you can find every week? That if over 100 Americans apply, “the 100 best people” needs to come from that group — not immigrants on visas which require a lack of American applicants. > This law fundamentally has an incoherent goal. I think you don’t like the goal.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  It's hard for law to cover all edge cases. Your comment about "modern large software engineering companies" seems to apply to 5 or 6 companies with enough profit to hire as many people as they want even if they may never use them for anything as a talent hoarding strategy, in contrast to the thousands of companies out there that still mostly hire to fill specific positions. This specific regulation was finalized in December 2004, so yes, it obviously could not have taken Facebook's specific hiring practices into consideration given Facebook hadn't even existed for a full year yet and I think had 6 employees at the time. You can certainly argue the law needs to change, but man, good luck. There are a lot of other aspects of immigration law that need to change with higher priority than this, but it's a political minefield that candidates love to campaign on but Congress won't actually touch with a 50 foot pole. Until then, I don't think the Department of Labor has much choice but to enforce the law as it exists today. It isn't up to them to change it.

by a-and 5y ago

joshka 5y ago

> > 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. It's fairly common practice to hire for the expertise and fit for the position. How is this different in that regard?

a-and 5y ago

To add - when this process fails, tech companies rotate employees out to a remote office (often in Canada). The US loses tax money which the employee would have paid and the position remains filled.

JPKab 5y ago

I'm not disagreeing with you on your comment at all, but the "much demonized H1 process" was legitimately abused by a lot of bad actors who violated the spirit of the visa (talent you can't find in US) in pursuit of simply using it to hire at a lower rate a captive employee who you can freely exploit. I was at a company that abused it, and we were hiring DBAs whose entire job was to administer MS SQL server. There were plenty of people locally who could do this, but none who were willing to work 70 hours a week for the very average salary. The US government wasn't even sharing any data on the visas publicly until the Trump administration forced them. Once the data was public, it was blatantly obvious as to why they hadn't shared the data before. Wipro, Cognizant, etc were hogging the H1Bs for labor arbitrage purposes, making it hard for people looking for actual rare talent to get anyone in country. I had a friend from Pune who was stuck waiting in India for 2 years (an amazingly talented ML engineer) due to us not being able to get him a visa while Wipro was stealing them all in the same region for their labor arbitrage business.

lacker 5y ago

When U.S. workers did apply, the suit said, Facebook hired them into different jobs, reserving the open position for the H-1B worker. For what it's worth, as an ex-FB engineering manager, this isn't how Facebook works at all. 99% of software engineers are not hired into an "open position". Facebook hires all software engineers that pass the hiring process without regard to whether they are US citizens or not. Then, after starting work for Facebook, there is a trial period where software engineers figure out what team they are going to work for, usually working a bit on a few different teams. Unfortunately, immigration law seems to be written by people who had no familiarity with how modern large software engineering companies operate. Tech companies are essentially forced to make up "positions" for the purposes of immigration law. This makes the law pointless, except for the occasional fine for not obeying the meaningless rules precisely enough, which is just the cost of doing business. There is just no way to make a company "first consider US citizens for every open job" when you don't hire one person at a time for separate jobs. What does that even mean when you are trying to hire 100 people a week, and you just want to hire the 100 best people you can find every week? This law fundamentally has an incoherent goal.

bopbeepboop 5y ago
> What does that even mean when you are trying to hire 100 people a week, and you just want to hire the 100 best people you can find every week? That if over 100 Americans apply, “the 100 best people” needs to come from that group — not immigrants on visas which require a lack of American applicants. > This law fundamentally has an incoherent goal. I think you don’t like the goal.
nonameiguess 5y ago
It's hard for law to cover all edge cases. Your comment about "modern large software engineering companies" seems to apply to 5 or 6 companies with enough profit to hire as many people as they want even if they may never use them for anything as a talent hoarding strategy, in contrast to the thousands of companies out there that still mostly hire to fill specific positions. This specific regulation was finalized in December 2004, so yes, it obviously could not have taken Facebook's specific hiring practices into consideration given Facebook hadn't even existed for a full year yet and I think had 6 employees at the time. You can certainly argue the law needs to change, but man, good luck. There are a lot of other aspects of immigration law that need to change with higher priority than this, but it's a political minefield that candidates love to campaign on but Congress won't actually touch with a 50 foot pole. Until then, I don't think the Department of Labor has much choice but to enforce the law as it exists today. It isn't up to them to change it.