alt Hacker NewsCorporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens
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Old news. This has been going on for decades. If you even look badly on youtube you will find corporate videos from "HR Consultants" teaching companies how to bury job listings so noone will be likely to find them.
Your country sold you down the river 30 years ago.
See for example a recent lawsuit accusing Tesla of running a systemic, ongoing scheme to replace or exclude US citizens in favor of H-1B visa employees.[1][2]
> Tesla prefers to hire these candidates [H-1B workers] over U.S. citizens, as it can pay visa-dependent employees less than American employees performing the same work, a practice in the industry known as “wage theft.”
> At the same time Tesla applied for these visa applications, it laid off more than 6,000 workers across the United States. On information and belief, Tesla laid off these workers, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens, so that it could replace them with non-citizen visa workers.
> The email also bluntly stated that the Tesla position was for “H1B only” and that “Travel history/i94 are a must” (i.e., proof of legal entry into the U.S.).
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71325887/taub-v-tesla-i...
[2] https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/lawsuit-say...
So I was at a company that did this a lot - it was much less nefarious than on the surface.
It was usually related to them recruiting a certain specialist or acquiring a team at another company. But the only way to get these people visas was to post the jobs publicly and hide them as much as possible. They did this by the hundreds, and it wasn't really a cost saving measure - if you are trying to get anybody in particular from Microsoft or Amazon and they are already here on a Visa, you have to go through the process all over again to sponsor them.
So it was less about racism and more about hoops to jump through to hire someone that you have already basically hired. If you've ever had experience with how a government RFP works, maybe don't throw rocks from glass houses.
Is it unfair? Maybe. But in my opinion anything is fairer than our country's evil immigration requirements.
You can find jobs that corporations tried to hide on jobs.now: https://www.jobs.now/
Instead of having job openings posted by those who don't want them found what if people posted willingness to work, perhaps in some sort of registry. That way a company would have to prove that none of the people willing to work are qualified. I'm sure many qualified people would be open to moving.
So grateful to see this being picked up by mainstream news outlets. Anecdotally I know quite a few engineers with experience ranging from small startup to long FAANG tenures that cannot even get an interview. It makes no sense to source outside of the US when qualified American workers cannot get jobs. At some point that became a radical stance and I'm sure I'll be flamed for it here.
To anybody playing attention it's very clear SV tech vastly prefers to import foreign labor rather than hire local. It has been this way for multiple decades now (and gets worse every year.) I don't see this changing any time soon. Sure they get the occasional slap on the wrist, but the wage suppression saves them way more money over time.
Why is hiding the jobs necessary? I applied for one of these jobs years ago.
The recruiter told, "I have no idea how you applied for this job, but its not available for you. let me have you interview a different, but similar, role."
What was I supposed to do other than say, "ok! Send over the other job description."?
For some visa types, companies are obligated to prove that they advertised the position to American citizens. Failed, hence they needed the foreigner.
This is a huge dealbreaker for campus hires, and specifically masters/PhDs who are, well, by definition, specialized in their field and hence very rare.
So you recruit at her graduation the girl who has done groundbreaking research in deep neural nets and is the key to one of your big projects. She happens to be non-American (because the majority of graduates are non-Americans).
Now what? You know that there is nobody else on the planet that has done this research, yet you have to start recruiting for this position for Americans.
What is the incentive you have as a company to pour a ton of resources on this effort? Recruiting is very expensive. Time is also very expensive when you are at the forefront of innovation.
Reminds me of the shenanigans you see when a govt job is required to be posted for open bid, but the dept already has an internal hire lined up.
>Should the system rely so heavily on asking out-of-work Americans to act as goalies — if or when they happen to have the time?
A zinger of a concluding line if ever there was one.
> According to the Justice Department, the companies absurdly required applicants to submit applications by mail [...] How many 20-something software engineers even know how to use a post office in 2025?
I always wondered how they made sure no one applied to the position they wanted the H1B to fill
I see lots of good ideas about changing the selection process. Another option is to change is to change the new hire process and require employers to advertise every recent H1B hiring decision for 60 days, including job description and resume. Then a native with an equal or better resume, and a willingness to fill the role, can raise their hand and offer to replace that person. If a native with a better resume is denied, then it is a cause for action against the employer (ideally a fine paid to the applicant that would at least fund further search time). Repeated violations would result in wholesale revocation of H1B access.
It’s much more banal than it seems.
Personal anecdote: I hired an exceptional H-1B worker to a role while I worked in SF, but was legally required to first advertise their role in 2 places. We put it in a 2am TV spot and a Modesto newspaper ad. But the whole thing was a legally required farce. We already knew from months of aggressive sourcing that no other qualified candidates existed - in fact we were over the moon to hire this person.
I think the hill is trying to create a narrative here. The law specifically states to post job postings in newspapers and it is congress's fault if they have not updated the laws.
As per PERM regulations (20 C.F.R. §656.17):
For professional positions (those requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher), the employer must conduct two Sunday newspaper advertisements in a newspaper of general circulation in the area of intended employment.
For non-professional positions, at least one Sunday ad is required.
I see everyone is for maximizing shareholder value until they are reminded they are workers first.
From experience: big tech has to post jobs to US citizens before it can hire on a visa or sponsor a green card. So the trick is to put an ad in a physical news paper and present that as evidence.
Fun fact: the payout from the meta settlement they reference works out to there being less than 4,000 members of the eligible class. Otoh getting a large check is always a pleasant surprise. I kept the letter cause it’s a huge amount
The only requirement for H1B should be that you must get your degree in the United States. H1B’s should not be given out otherwise. It would solve almost all current shortcomings of the program
If Apple and Meta have had to pay $38 million for engaging in these practices I don't understand why they used the subtle "chronically-online" dig against people trying to expose it:
"And this has given rise to a cottage industry of chronically-online types — in other words, typical tech workers — seeking to expose them."
I recall there being a proposal to prioritize H1Bs based on salary, which would at least lessen or eliminate the race to the bottom and stuff like people training their lower paid replacements
> How many 20-something software engineers even know how to use a post office in 2025?
Ok, come on, this is just an insulting "kids these days" throw-away line that is absolutely not necessary.
We effectively replaced 43 h1b’s with AI. Looking to do more soon.
One popular trick was to advertise the jobs in newspapers. The dead-tree edition only.
> However, in order for applications for permanent residency to be successful, companies must certify their inability to find a suitable American candidate to take the position they’re looking to fill with a foreign national
I mean, you know, if you already have an employee working on H1B, why would you take the risk to hire someone else to replace them? The perm process is pretty broken in that way.
Didn't Apple used to post job openings in small local newspapers in the Midwest?
This crime has yet to be addressed.
There's another thing happening which people haven't really heard much about, which is basically ChatGPT Pro is really good at making legal arguments. And so people that previously would never have filed something like a discrimination lawsuit can now use ChatGPT to understand how to respond to managers' emails and proactively send emails that point out discrimination in non-threatening manner, and so in ways that create legal entrapment. I think people are drastically underestimating what's going to happen over the next 10 years and how bad the discrimination is in a lot of workplaces.
The crucial thing if you’re a foreigner is to look at the comments here and be very careful as to whether you’d empower a software engineer union full of these people to deport you.
In Savannah, the local unions got the Koreans deported from the Hyundai factory.
That's the real reason for the job market crisis; it is not AI, it's just corporate greed to have borderline slaves to lower job wages and workers willing to work extra hours for peanuts. AI is just the scapegoat, easy to blame it on something that's still new while also milking investors' money by promising how it will reduce costs and increase profits. If the job market crisis were really from AI, not only should it happen within a few years of adopting such new tech, but we should see its impact on other industries like lawyers, medical doctors, administrators, and lastly on tech workers, not the other way around.
That's why I keep saying and repeating: the tech industry and especially the engineering one should be further regulated and restricted just like other professions out there, otherwise, you are only allowing anyone to scam and game the system with any potential bubble currently happening.
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I'm certainly not an expert in immigration law but this whole system seems pretty stupid.
On one hand, H1B holders can be paid below market rates because it is very hard for them to switch jobs. For this reason, they create resentment from American citizens.
On the other hand, it would be extremely detrimental to the US to kill the golden goose of our tech industry by turning it into some kind of forced welfare for citizens. Another country which is able to hire the best from around the world will take our place.
And then of course, the entire program is structured in an extremely bureaucratic way, with all this nonsense about publishing job ads in secret newspapers.
It seems that these issues could be addressed very simply by tweaking Trump's proposed "gold card" system: anyone can get a work visa, by paying $100,000 per year. This is not tied to a specific employer. The high payment ensures that the only people coming over are doing so to earn a high salary in a highly skilled field. There is no tying the employee to a specific company, so it is fairer for citizens to compete against them.
Essentially, they want to hire a specific person, while the law requires that they post the job and prefer American citizens, so they don’t want American citizens to apply not that they prefer foreign workers in general they just have a specific candidate in mind.
I think Trump’s position of forcing companies to pay a substantial fee in exchange for a fast tracked green card is really the most sensible position instead of H1B. It should be less than $5 million, but I think if a company had to pay $300k not have any or limited protection against that person quickly finding a job in the. united states, then companies would generally prefer american workers in a way that makes economic sense, because talented workers can be acquired for a price, but not be kept for peanuts in exchange for less than an American worker, because they are stuck with the employer for 20 years if they come from a quota country.
This is hilarious.
It isn't just corporations, its the federal government. The same ones hiding the rampant student rape issue at UIUC Champaign
A lot of these problems could be solved if H1-B's were given out in order of salary (I think there's such a proposal going around recently). And by that I mean: something like a Dutch auction. Give H1-Bs to the top 85K paying jobs (maybe normalized to SoL in the region, I'm sure the BLS has some idea on how to do it).
The lure of H1-Bs is the money savings, and the fact that if you're on an H1-B, you're practically an indentured servant (Yes, things have changed recently and it is easier on paper to switch jobs while on H1-B). It used to be that if you lost your job as an H1-B, you had 30 days to uproot your life and get out of the US otherwise you'd be in violation of immigration laws.