6 ms·

I never really understood about PERM. Suppose I am a manager on a team and one of my employees is going through the PERM process. I'm supposed to put out a job

I never really understood about PERM. Suppose I am a manager on a team and one of my employees is going through the PERM process. I'm supposed to put out a job advertisement (but the job isn't real) for my employer. If an applicant passes the interview process, I don't have to hire that person (I probably can't - I don't have budget or permission from the organization). But I do have to honestly say if they have all the required skills -- I'm not permitted to say "wouldn't be a culture fit." Nor do I have to fire my employee. But maybe my employee won't get a green card six years down the road. 1) Do I have any details wrong here? The one time I talked to a law firm about this they more-or-less refused to state the above outright, but answered all questions in this direction. 2) Doesn't this seem disrespectful to, among others, the applicants to the fake job?

proberts 5mo ago
I think everyone would agree that the PERM process is an awful process for both applicants and for employers. The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. Now, where there are multiple openings for the position, then it's possible for an employer to hire a U.S. worker without terminating the PERM process for the foreign national employee.
- foobiekr 5mo ago
  It is well known at the companies that I've worked for that there is no good faith at all in the process and it's basically ritual to justify the application. Since they are clearly violating the law, how can I report this?
  - proberts 5mo ago
    The government agencies involved are the DOL and USCIS so you would report abuses/violations to them.
  - ianhawes 5mo ago
    If they've complied with the DOL regulations and requirements, what makes you think they're violating the law?
    - foobiekr 5mo ago
      Explicitly and openly not acting in good faith.
      - bubblethink 5mo ago
        That is your contention though. The government needs to prove that in a court of law that they are violating the statute or the regulations.
        shimman 5mo ago
        Oh come on, are we seriously acting like jobs building out react components or java endpoints are remotely complicated and not a skill that could be trained within 3 months?
        jmyeet 5mo ago
        It's a fairly well-founded contention eg [1][2][3]. Here's a problem I often see when technical people, particular engineers, try to analyze legal issues: they tend to look for technical compliance (or noncompliance) or use standards like absolute proof but the law simply doesn't work that way. Legal decisions tend to come down to things like witness credibility, a holistic view of the facts and whatever evidence standard is being used (eg preponderence of the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, clear and convincing evidence). An example I like to use is back when prosecutions for downloading something illegal were more in the news. A technical person might argue "an IP address doens't mean anything. It could've been anybody". But the law will look at the totality of the evidence (eg browser history, time when it happened, were you home at the time, whether such media was found on your PC, etc. And the way the Rules of Evidence work, you might not even be able to suggest certain alternative theories (eg "my Wifi was hacked") without evidence. Another good example is sponsoring someone for a marriage-based green card. You need to be in a bona fide marriage and you'll get people who will look for technical compliance. Is having a joint bank account enough? Photos? A joint lease? Filing a joint tax return? Those are some of the factors USCIS uses but no single factor is sufficient. USCIS will look at the totality of the evidence in determining if a marriage is bona fide. so back to PERM abuse, arguments like "we made an error with the email address" or "we accidentally lost some US citizen applications" or even "we complied with the technical requirements for advertising a position" may not carry the day because the totality of the evidence may still amount to immigration fraud. Lastly, it should be noted that a lack of a prosecution (yet?) is not proof of legality or compliance either. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/28/cloudera_doj_employment_discrimination_lawsuit/ https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/28/cloudera_doj_employme... [2]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-labor-departments-reach-settlements-facebook-resolving-claims-discrimination-against https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-labor-depart... [3]: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/employee-rights-labour-relations/1391782/doj-settlements-with-tech-companies-highlight-importance-of-perm-recruitment-compliance https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/employee-rights-labour-r...
- BeetleB 5mo ago
  > The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. The "or" part in the last sentence is worth noting. At the place I've worked, the employer invokes the second clause (i.e. PERM process is canceled/suspended, and they try again 6-12 months later). The way it worked there was: Employer publishes an open req. We get lots of resumes. Manager calls the few people who may be a match. Then the manager has to justify why the person doesn't have the skills and the process continues. Sometimes (and this is likely a bit random), the government does an audit, where they get the details of all who applied. Then they call the manager and start grilling him on why a particular candidate was rejected. If the manager can convince them, the PERM process continues. If not, they fail the Department of Labor Certification and the PERM process is canceled. The person doesn't lose his job. They're just ineligible and need to apply again after a certain window. I do know folks applying for PERM who were rejected twice because of this. The insane thing was that their roles (EE with specific specialty) were legitimately hard to fill, whereas other people in the team doing trivial scripting easily got through PERM. The process is messed up in many ways.
  - jmyeet 5mo ago
    Generally lawyers need to be involved to make sure any rejections are compliant. There's a whole cottage industry around this. Personally, given the state of unemployment in the tech sector right now, I think it should be virtually impossible to fill a PERM right now because pretty much any position could be filled with a US LPR or citizen and the only reason it isn't is because the whole process is deliberately obfuscated or artificial barriers are put up purposefully to disqualify candidates. I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years.
    - BeetleB 5mo ago
      > I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years. This is a very SW mindset, and makes no sense in other circumstances. If my company canceled a large SW project, and laid off a lot of SW folks, why should that prevent them from sponsoring someone to work on nanoelectronics?

proberts 5mo ago

I think everyone would agree that the PERM process is an awful process for both applicants and for employers. The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. Now, where there are multiple openings for the position, then it's possible for an employer to hire a U.S. worker without terminating the PERM process for the foreign national employee.

foobiekr 5mo ago
It is well known at the companies that I've worked for that there is no good faith at all in the process and it's basically ritual to justify the application. Since they are clearly violating the law, how can I report this?
- proberts 5mo ago
  The government agencies involved are the DOL and USCIS so you would report abuses/violations to them.
- ianhawes 5mo ago
  If they've complied with the DOL regulations and requirements, what makes you think they're violating the law?
  - foobiekr 5mo ago
    Explicitly and openly not acting in good faith.
    - bubblethink 5mo ago
      That is your contention though. The government needs to prove that in a court of law that they are violating the statute or the regulations.
      - shimman 5mo ago
        Oh come on, are we seriously acting like jobs building out react components or java endpoints are remotely complicated and not a skill that could be trained within 3 months?
      - jmyeet 5mo ago
        It's a fairly well-founded contention eg [1][2][3]. Here's a problem I often see when technical people, particular engineers, try to analyze legal issues: they tend to look for technical compliance (or noncompliance) or use standards like absolute proof but the law simply doesn't work that way. Legal decisions tend to come down to things like witness credibility, a holistic view of the facts and whatever evidence standard is being used (eg preponderence of the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, clear and convincing evidence). An example I like to use is back when prosecutions for downloading something illegal were more in the news. A technical person might argue "an IP address doens't mean anything. It could've been anybody". But the law will look at the totality of the evidence (eg browser history, time when it happened, were you home at the time, whether such media was found on your PC, etc. And the way the Rules of Evidence work, you might not even be able to suggest certain alternative theories (eg "my Wifi was hacked") without evidence. Another good example is sponsoring someone for a marriage-based green card. You need to be in a bona fide marriage and you'll get people who will look for technical compliance. Is having a joint bank account enough? Photos? A joint lease? Filing a joint tax return? Those are some of the factors USCIS uses but no single factor is sufficient. USCIS will look at the totality of the evidence in determining if a marriage is bona fide. so back to PERM abuse, arguments like "we made an error with the email address" or "we accidentally lost some US citizen applications" or even "we complied with the technical requirements for advertising a position" may not carry the day because the totality of the evidence may still amount to immigration fraud. Lastly, it should be noted that a lack of a prosecution (yet?) is not proof of legality or compliance either. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/28/cloudera_doj_employment_discrimination_lawsuit/ https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/28/cloudera_doj_employme... [2]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-labor-departments-reach-settlements-facebook-resolving-claims-discrimination-against https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-labor-depart... [3]: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/employee-rights-labour-relations/1391782/doj-settlements-with-tech-companies-highlight-importance-of-perm-recruitment-compliance https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/employee-rights-labour-r...
BeetleB 5mo ago
> The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. The "or" part in the last sentence is worth noting. At the place I've worked, the employer invokes the second clause (i.e. PERM process is canceled/suspended, and they try again 6-12 months later). The way it worked there was: Employer publishes an open req. We get lots of resumes. Manager calls the few people who may be a match. Then the manager has to justify why the person doesn't have the skills and the process continues. Sometimes (and this is likely a bit random), the government does an audit, where they get the details of all who applied. Then they call the manager and start grilling him on why a particular candidate was rejected. If the manager can convince them, the PERM process continues. If not, they fail the Department of Labor Certification and the PERM process is canceled. The person doesn't lose his job. They're just ineligible and need to apply again after a certain window. I do know folks applying for PERM who were rejected twice because of this. The insane thing was that their roles (EE with specific specialty) were legitimately hard to fill, whereas other people in the team doing trivial scripting easily got through PERM. The process is messed up in many ways.
- jmyeet 5mo ago
  Generally lawyers need to be involved to make sure any rejections are compliant. There's a whole cottage industry around this. Personally, given the state of unemployment in the tech sector right now, I think it should be virtually impossible to fill a PERM right now because pretty much any position could be filled with a US LPR or citizen and the only reason it isn't is because the whole process is deliberately obfuscated or artificial barriers are put up purposefully to disqualify candidates. I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years.
  - BeetleB 5mo ago
    > I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years. This is a very SW mindset, and makes no sense in other circumstances. If my company canceled a large SW project, and laid off a lot of SW folks, why should that prevent them from sponsoring someone to work on nanoelectronics?