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Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when

Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when they clearly could fill the job you don't hire them? Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce

lukevp 2y ago
Hence why there are so many h1bs.
cj 2y ago
At the last startup I worked at, our CTO was on a visa. To satisfy the "no one in the US can fill the CTO role", they took out an advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper classifieds so they had evidence that they attempted to find a US citizen / permanent resident CTO. Obviously there were no applicants.
- dec0dedab0de 2y ago
  CTO actually makes sense for an h1b though, it’s a high paying job that can depend greatly on the technical and creative skills of the individual and how they mesh with the company. The problem is when it’s someone pumping out code, or doing tech support for half the cost of the local competition.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    No, this is backwards CTO is not such an exceptional role that you can convince me that a company couldn't find a single person in America who would be qualified to take it It's also a highly sought after role, so people would generally be willing to relocate for a role like that H1Bs are designed to fill labour shortages, where your local labour market is saturated and you are struggling to find local talent or attract talent from further away, so you can import workers Using a visa designed to fill labour shortages for an executive position like CTO is frankly an abuse of the system
    - returningfory2 2y ago
      But arguably any labor shortage can be fixed by just having way higher wages. Like if Google is struggling to hire L3 entry level engineers, can't they just offer $1 million/year salary? Then of course they will get the people they want. To me, the point of H-1B and similar programs isn't "we can't get the individual staff we need". It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. And I feel that the success of Silicon Valley kind of shows this: if we didn't have any immigrants to the US, maybe the salaries would have been higher, but there is simply no chance SV would have reached the scale it has.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. Beneficial to owners of capital in said country. Not so beneficial to non owners of capital (also usually labor sellers) in said country.
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        It's not so binary. Economic growth and prosperity does benefit a broad swath of society.
        mistrial9 2y ago
        btw the actual couch used by Marie Antionette is now on display at the San Francisco Legion of Honor.. a very expensive couch! at least a dozen people must have benefited economically from that couch.
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        They most certainly did! However, that is a pretty tortured comparison if that was the case. I think I would be harder to make such a cynical zing about the net benefit of allowing 10,000 doctors to immigrate.
- giobox 2y ago
  This used to be fairly common for H1B roles of any level - I don't find it surprising almost no one wants to fire a colleague ultimately, so doing whatever you could to reduce the number of applicants while still paying lip service to the rules is the logical outcome, rightly or wrongly. For what its worth, towards end of 2010s USCIS were starting to clamp down on this and were being a lot stricter about the job being advertised appropriately for the role (you submit evidence of the advertisement during the PERM process).
- apwheele 2y ago
  A tell for fake firms in my local newspaper is they ask for a snail mail resume. These appear to me to be more like shell companies submitting multiple H1Bs as far as I can tell though, not legit firms saying they cannot hire any US.
  - kyawzazaw 2y ago
    real firms do this too. Pick up a local newspaper that is not well known.
zjdixhxjzkz 2y ago
It is. Best case scenario H1Bs allow companies to avoid training citizens. Worst case (and most common) H1Bs are more exploitable labor compared to citizens. H1Bs etc just suppress citizens wages and increase profits of capital holders. There’s a very very tiny % that actually aren’t replaceable domestically.
- calculatte 2y ago
  This is an excellent point and a real litmus test. If there really were a labor shortage companies would be providing training programs to build that labor force. Instead they post job descriptions so niche only a liar could technically qualify.
- JAlexoid 2y ago
  Fist - it is not companies' responsibility to train anyone. It is not their business. Second - H1b are exploitable, because the system allows it. H1b has demonstrably not suppressed software engineering wages at all. Non-competes, have - on the other hand.
  - John_Cena 2y ago
    > H1b has demonstrably not suppressed software engineering wages at all. That's simply impossible; it's basic economics.
    - projectazorian 2y ago
      The lump of labor fallacy is usually covered in “basic economics” classes. There are multiplier effects from clustering of certain types of skilled workers. This increases overall demand and thus overall compensation for everyone in the market. This is why ending the H1B program like posters propose here would be profoundly stupid - if companies can’t staff their teams here, they will staff them elsewhere, and either stop hiring here or close up shop entirely. This will lower salaries and increase unemployment in the relevant fields. You already see this in microcosm due to real estate costs serving as a brake on internal migration, many companies have moved all net new hiring out of the Bay Area. Now admit too many foreign workers at too low wages and you will hit diminishing returns, but we are way short of that point, especially if we can manage to curb abuses of the existing program.
School-Cotton 2y ago
> Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce Correct. It's pure theatre.
dec0dedab0de 2y ago
Yes, h1b hiring practices have been shady at best for atleast a decade. For everyone that just doesn’t want to fire a coworker there is someone taking advantage of cheap labor that is easier to control under the threat of deportation. The h1b program is supposed to be for people at the top of their field so they can skip the normal visa line, but it is commonly used to save money through exploitation. A long time ago I read an hn comment that suggested h1b visas should go to the highest paying jobs, with the logic being that if they are such a rare talent they should probably be getting paid more.
- projectazorian 2y ago
  > The h1b program is supposed to be for people at the top of their field so they can skip the normal visa line, but it is commonly used to save money through exploitation. Incorrect - such people already qualify for green cards under the "alien of extraordinary ability" criterion. At least in theory, anyway. There is no "normal visa line" btw, unless you mean the green card diversity lottery, which people from eg. India and China don't even qualify for. > A long time ago I read an hn comment that suggested h1b visas should go to the highest paying jobs, with the logic being that if they are such a rare talent they should probably be getting paid more. This is in principle a good idea although I suspect that if actually implemented employers would figure out how to game the system just as they do now.
  - dec0dedab0de 2y ago
    You’re right, I was a bit hyperbolic there. Though it is supposed to be for skilled jobs that a capable american is not available to do.
    - returningfory2 2y ago
      > Though it is supposed to be for skilled jobs that a capable american is not available to do. No it's not. The H-1B program has no requirement for a labor market test (i.e. showing that there is no citizen that can do the job). The Immigration and Nationality Act, which is the source of the H-1B program, does not have such a requirement. The only big requirements are that the job require a degree (except for fashion models) and that it pays the prevailing wage.
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
This has been going on for decades. My first job out of university was at a dotcom consultancy with over 90% of software engineers there on H1B visas. The company was not at all shy about the fact that they only hired citizens/permanent residents if they had no other choice. I was hired because I had experience with a particular obscure RTOS that they couldn't find anyone on a visa who could do the work on a project they already told a client we were experts in. Our VP of Software Engineering (here on a visa himself) stood right next to my desk telling one of our programmers not to worry about his visa expiring because they'd post his job for 24 hours on the company website, accept resumes for one week, and then declare the job unfillable by local talent so he could get his visa renewed. This was in 2000 and this type of thing has been practiced openly and with no fear of there ever being any consequences for violating both the letter and spirit of the law regarding using labor visas. These threads end up fire hosed with people claiming hiring visa holders over citizens and permanent residents doesn't happen nor does it push down wages. They know these are lies and have been lies for decades. But since there are no consequences, legally or socially, it continues to be the default behavior. This in turn warps local talent development as more and more kids see that there's little reason to go into a career field where the government and business openly collude to disadvantage locals in favor of visa labor.
- davidgay 2y ago
  > These threads end up fire hosed with people claiming hiring visa holders over citizens and permanent residents They apparently also get fire-hosed with comments on the horrors of H1B hiring in a thread that is on green card application rules, i.e., all youb commenters on H1B did not even read the GP post. Those rules require advertising for a filled position, but don't require firing the current holder when you find a good candidate.
dustyventure 2y ago
> Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce It's extremely easy to enforce with taxes that ensure the company is paying at least 1X0% of the highest market rate for the position. If they don't find an alternative to paying it is a necessary hire.
- projectazorian 2y ago
  The requirement to pay market rate already exists and it's very easily gamed, eg. by under-leveling people or hiring them in under a related (but lower paid) role that doesn't reflect their actual responsibilities.
  - dustyventure 2y ago
    There's no premium financing proper adversarial regulatory agency there. If the IRS is not taking its special ~30% of 300+ workers salaries there's a best effort by a regulatory body that's viewed as a waste of tax payer money if it just checks a few technicalities.
shmatt 2y ago
The requirement you mention is for filing a green card application. If I find a good citizen, I don’t file the application, that’s the law. But the employee does have h1b or OPT and is still allowed to work in the US, nothing wrong with that. If the government wants to stop giving those out workplaces will adapt
furyofantares 2y ago
After reading it a few times my understanding is this: An H1B job holder applies for a green card. OP then must interview to prove the role can't be filled by a citizen. An interviewee knocks it out of the park, failing the check and so the green card application is denied. However the person holding the job is still legally allowed to work for 2-3 years in their H1B. So they're kept on for that long even though the check failed for the green card.
canucker2016 2y ago
the person applying for the green card already works for the interviewing company. the job opening is THAT green card applicant's job requirements. the lawyer/law firm handling the green card application process has to prove that there are no US citizens who are qualified to do the job. if there were qualified applicants for the job, then the green card applicant won't be given a green card, I assume. But that green card applicant is already working in the country via some other visa, so there is no job opening to fill typically. the current person in the job is performing well, otherwise, why would you be trying to get a green card for them? i've never heard of any green card applicant getting denied a green card due to a qualified US citizen applicant.
- gmueckl 2y ago
  If the labor market test yields a candidate, the petition isn't filed. So there is formally no rejection from the USCIS. But application processes fail at this step all the time.
  - shmatt 2y ago
    You explained it perfectly. I’d never lie, if I interviewed someone comparable the process ends immediately internally. But the employee (who is still an amazing employee, exceeds, promotions, Etc) is not fired

lukevp 2y ago

Hence why there are so many h1bs.

cj 2y ago

At the last startup I worked at, our CTO was on a visa. To satisfy the "no one in the US can fill the CTO role", they took out an advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper classifieds so they had evidence that they attempted to find a US citizen / permanent resident CTO. Obviously there were no applicants.

dec0dedab0de 2y ago
CTO actually makes sense for an h1b though, it’s a high paying job that can depend greatly on the technical and creative skills of the individual and how they mesh with the company. The problem is when it’s someone pumping out code, or doing tech support for half the cost of the local competition.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  No, this is backwards CTO is not such an exceptional role that you can convince me that a company couldn't find a single person in America who would be qualified to take it It's also a highly sought after role, so people would generally be willing to relocate for a role like that H1Bs are designed to fill labour shortages, where your local labour market is saturated and you are struggling to find local talent or attract talent from further away, so you can import workers Using a visa designed to fill labour shortages for an executive position like CTO is frankly an abuse of the system
  - returningfory2 2y ago
    But arguably any labor shortage can be fixed by just having way higher wages. Like if Google is struggling to hire L3 entry level engineers, can't they just offer $1 million/year salary? Then of course they will get the people they want. To me, the point of H-1B and similar programs isn't "we can't get the individual staff we need". It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. And I feel that the success of Silicon Valley kind of shows this: if we didn't have any immigrants to the US, maybe the salaries would have been higher, but there is simply no chance SV would have reached the scale it has.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. Beneficial to owners of capital in said country. Not so beneficial to non owners of capital (also usually labor sellers) in said country.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        It's not so binary. Economic growth and prosperity does benefit a broad swath of society.
        mistrial9 2y ago
        btw the actual couch used by Marie Antionette is now on display at the San Francisco Legion of Honor.. a very expensive couch! at least a dozen people must have benefited economically from that couch.
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        They most certainly did! However, that is a pretty tortured comparison if that was the case. I think I would be harder to make such a cynical zing about the net benefit of allowing 10,000 doctors to immigrate.
giobox 2y ago
This used to be fairly common for H1B roles of any level - I don't find it surprising almost no one wants to fire a colleague ultimately, so doing whatever you could to reduce the number of applicants while still paying lip service to the rules is the logical outcome, rightly or wrongly. For what its worth, towards end of 2010s USCIS were starting to clamp down on this and were being a lot stricter about the job being advertised appropriately for the role (you submit evidence of the advertisement during the PERM process).
apwheele 2y ago
A tell for fake firms in my local newspaper is they ask for a snail mail resume. These appear to me to be more like shell companies submitting multiple H1Bs as far as I can tell though, not legit firms saying they cannot hire any US.
- kyawzazaw 2y ago
  real firms do this too. Pick up a local newspaper that is not well known.

zjdixhxjzkz 2y ago

It is. Best case scenario H1Bs allow companies to avoid training citizens. Worst case (and most common) H1Bs are more exploitable labor compared to citizens. H1Bs etc just suppress citizens wages and increase profits of capital holders. There’s a very very tiny % that actually aren’t replaceable domestically.

calculatte 2y ago
This is an excellent point and a real litmus test. If there really were a labor shortage companies would be providing training programs to build that labor force. Instead they post job descriptions so niche only a liar could technically qualify.
JAlexoid 2y ago
Fist - it is not companies' responsibility to train anyone. It is not their business. Second - H1b are exploitable, because the system allows it. H1b has demonstrably not suppressed software engineering wages at all. Non-competes, have - on the other hand.
- John_Cena 2y ago
  > H1b has demonstrably not suppressed software engineering wages at all. That's simply impossible; it's basic economics.
  - projectazorian 2y ago
    The lump of labor fallacy is usually covered in “basic economics” classes. There are multiplier effects from clustering of certain types of skilled workers. This increases overall demand and thus overall compensation for everyone in the market. This is why ending the H1B program like posters propose here would be profoundly stupid - if companies can’t staff their teams here, they will staff them elsewhere, and either stop hiring here or close up shop entirely. This will lower salaries and increase unemployment in the relevant fields. You already see this in microcosm due to real estate costs serving as a brake on internal migration, many companies have moved all net new hiring out of the Bay Area. Now admit too many foreign workers at too low wages and you will hit diminishing returns, but we are way short of that point, especially if we can manage to curb abuses of the existing program.

School-Cotton 2y ago

> Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce Correct. It's pure theatre.

dec0dedab0de 2y ago

Yes, h1b hiring practices have been shady at best for atleast a decade. For everyone that just doesn’t want to fire a coworker there is someone taking advantage of cheap labor that is easier to control under the threat of deportation. The h1b program is supposed to be for people at the top of their field so they can skip the normal visa line, but it is commonly used to save money through exploitation. A long time ago I read an hn comment that suggested h1b visas should go to the highest paying jobs, with the logic being that if they are such a rare talent they should probably be getting paid more.

projectazorian 2y ago
> The h1b program is supposed to be for people at the top of their field so they can skip the normal visa line, but it is commonly used to save money through exploitation. Incorrect - such people already qualify for green cards under the "alien of extraordinary ability" criterion. At least in theory, anyway. There is no "normal visa line" btw, unless you mean the green card diversity lottery, which people from eg. India and China don't even qualify for. > A long time ago I read an hn comment that suggested h1b visas should go to the highest paying jobs, with the logic being that if they are such a rare talent they should probably be getting paid more. This is in principle a good idea although I suspect that if actually implemented employers would figure out how to game the system just as they do now.
- dec0dedab0de 2y ago
  You’re right, I was a bit hyperbolic there. Though it is supposed to be for skilled jobs that a capable american is not available to do.
  - returningfory2 2y ago
    > Though it is supposed to be for skilled jobs that a capable american is not available to do. No it's not. The H-1B program has no requirement for a labor market test (i.e. showing that there is no citizen that can do the job). The Immigration and Nationality Act, which is the source of the H-1B program, does not have such a requirement. The only big requirements are that the job require a degree (except for fashion models) and that it pays the prevailing wage.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

This has been going on for decades. My first job out of university was at a dotcom consultancy with over 90% of software engineers there on H1B visas. The company was not at all shy about the fact that they only hired citizens/permanent residents if they had no other choice. I was hired because I had experience with a particular obscure RTOS that they couldn't find anyone on a visa who could do the work on a project they already told a client we were experts in. Our VP of Software Engineering (here on a visa himself) stood right next to my desk telling one of our programmers not to worry about his visa expiring because they'd post his job for 24 hours on the company website, accept resumes for one week, and then declare the job unfillable by local talent so he could get his visa renewed. This was in 2000 and this type of thing has been practiced openly and with no fear of there ever being any consequences for violating both the letter and spirit of the law regarding using labor visas. These threads end up fire hosed with people claiming hiring visa holders over citizens and permanent residents doesn't happen nor does it push down wages. They know these are lies and have been lies for decades. But since there are no consequences, legally or socially, it continues to be the default behavior. This in turn warps local talent development as more and more kids see that there's little reason to go into a career field where the government and business openly collude to disadvantage locals in favor of visa labor.

davidgay 2y ago
> These threads end up fire hosed with people claiming hiring visa holders over citizens and permanent residents They apparently also get fire-hosed with comments on the horrors of H1B hiring in a thread that is on green card application rules, i.e., all youb commenters on H1B did not even read the GP post. Those rules require advertising for a filled position, but don't require firing the current holder when you find a good candidate.

dustyventure 2y ago

> Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce It's extremely easy to enforce with taxes that ensure the company is paying at least 1X0% of the highest market rate for the position. If they don't find an alternative to paying it is a necessary hire.

projectazorian 2y ago
The requirement to pay market rate already exists and it's very easily gamed, eg. by under-leveling people or hiring them in under a related (but lower paid) role that doesn't reflect their actual responsibilities.
- dustyventure 2y ago
  There's no premium financing proper adversarial regulatory agency there. If the IRS is not taking its special ~30% of 300+ workers salaries there's a best effort by a regulatory body that's viewed as a waste of tax payer money if it just checks a few technicalities.

shmatt 2y ago

The requirement you mention is for filing a green card application. If I find a good citizen, I don’t file the application, that’s the law. But the employee does have h1b or OPT and is still allowed to work in the US, nothing wrong with that. If the government wants to stop giving those out workplaces will adapt

furyofantares 2y ago

After reading it a few times my understanding is this: An H1B job holder applies for a green card. OP then must interview to prove the role can't be filled by a citizen. An interviewee knocks it out of the park, failing the check and so the green card application is denied. However the person holding the job is still legally allowed to work for 2-3 years in their H1B. So they're kept on for that long even though the check failed for the green card.

canucker2016 2y ago

the person applying for the green card already works for the interviewing company. the job opening is THAT green card applicant's job requirements. the lawyer/law firm handling the green card application process has to prove that there are no US citizens who are qualified to do the job. if there were qualified applicants for the job, then the green card applicant won't be given a green card, I assume. But that green card applicant is already working in the country via some other visa, so there is no job opening to fill typically. the current person in the job is performing well, otherwise, why would you be trying to get a green card for them? i've never heard of any green card applicant getting denied a green card due to a qualified US citizen applicant.

gmueckl 2y ago
If the labor market test yields a candidate, the petition isn't filed. So there is formally no rejection from the USCIS. But application processes fail at this step all the time.
- shmatt 2y ago
  You explained it perfectly. I’d never lie, if I interviewed someone comparable the process ends immediately internally. But the employee (who is still an amazing employee, exceeds, promotions, Etc) is not fired