PERM is a much more rigorous and demanding process and it costs a lot more money than anything related to H1B. The reason is because it leads to a green card, not just a work permit. Often, it requires an advance degree and higher qualification than H1B too, PhDs or experienced masters. The money is paid upfront and USCIS then look into it and approves PERM on a case by case basis often taking a year or more. Then when the PERM passes, the applicant can finally get on the green card backlog and wait a few more years, or a decade if you were born in the wrong place...

This is to say the quality of applicants here is very high and Apple actually felt it was worth it to invest tens of thousands of dollars on each of them just for a green card gamble, which the employee can get then quit Apple immediately after and nothing can be done to them because they are now a permanent resident. No such thing as wage depression or abuse at this point because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American once they have EB2.

If the PERM process at Apple is anything like what I saw at Facebook a couple of years ago, then all these “applicants” are actually people already working at the company on non-immigrant visas whom the company wants to retain.

There is no reason to assume that they’re being paid any less than others at Apple. They’re already in the country and have been doing the work for years. Why not give them a path to a green card? Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

I’ll admit that I’m biased because I was in this process at one point. But the notion that I was taking the job of a native-born American was ridiculous because I had been doing the job in London before. So if anything, I brought a UK job to USA. And to turn that into a green card, the company would have to advertise the job on their website. It makes no sense.

Indeed. I really doubt Apple prefers foreigners in their hiring (it's a rather significant hassle to bring somebody in). If anything, citizens have some edge.

But once an immigrant has been hired, the PERM process essentially would require trying to hire for that position again, and employers (not just Apple) are anything but motivated to replace an experienced and qualified employee with several years' experience at the company with an untested new hire, so they treat this process as a Kabuki performance.

Because it's illegal to (positively) discriminate for these people and shield them from competing with American citizens and GC-holders for jobs.

> Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

As Apple just found out: creating a fake position to end-run immigration law is illegal.

If the individuals are more skilled than citizens, the Apple should have been prepared to open the interviews for those jobs to everyone (including citizens and permanent residents), selected the (person they knew to have been) the best and gotten the paperwork in order. The subterfuge would be completely unnecessary if they applied under the correct visa class and skills of those involved are as advertised.

The laws governing immigration are very specific about the distinctions between visa classes and the requirements for each class- and the devil is in the details.

> The competition and interviews already happened when the person was first hired.

Perhaps, but that is your and Apple's (tacit) opinions. The government of the United States disagrees, and Apple just paid $25 million dollars to avoid getting this issue in front of a judge.

The difference in perspective, AFAICT, is you think a GC is a reward for getting a job after besting others (including citizens) in interviews. The government's contention is that the bar is higher: PERM is for jobs no American citizen or permanent resident are able and willing to do[1]. There are separate visa classes for being merely good, and being irreplaceable. Pretending that a candidate who is in the former group belongs to the latter by posting jobs on a noticeboard in an unlit basement without stairs is dishonest.

1. "The DOL must certify to the USCIS that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment"

Some would welcome the reduced influx of immigrants. But in the long term, it would cripple the US. If an individual can convince a company to sponsor them, they are already highly qualified and productive to society. If you deny even these people from immigrating here, then who would you let in? You turn them away and China or the EU would gladly take them. Meanwhile, you lose a significant portion of your workforce that contribute tax without ever withdrawing from it and a lot of research and development at the PhD and master levels done at minimum wages.

The current situation benefits the US a lot. There is a reason why they are hesitating to make any big reform. The US is having the chance to exploit the world's best and brightest all for a few pieces of paper a year. At most there are 140K permanent residents being made each year via this route. It is insignificant compared to the millions of US college graduate annually. The argument about "they took our jobs" is not really valid to me.

Firstly, there's a good reason the people in question want to go the US instead of China or the EU. EU salaries are much lower and the local language is always a barrier. The same holds for China, salaries can be higher but not US level and then there's all the other obvious drawbacks of living there.

Secondly, China also wouldn't gladly take them, it's the direct opposite

> if you don't dangle this GC reward

In China a GC-like reward is unfathomable.

Sometimes there is a shortage of domestic candidates with sufficient qualifications and experience in the general field. Sometimes the job is highly specialized, and nobody outside of a handful of internal candidates can possibly do it without extensive training. Sometimes the candidate was selected according to the established standards of a profession, and the job only exists for that particular person. And so on.

A fake application process is dishonest, regardless of whether it looks like a real job opportunity or is intentionally kept hidden. But if the process is open and you know in advance that no other candidate can possibly qualify, you are being not only dishonest but also impolite. Unrelated people may apply thinking it's a real job opportunity, wasting their time.

No, the difference in opinion is the absurdity of it all. To the extent that the government (DOL) can influence the labor market, for any practical benefit, it needs to do so at the outset and quickly. The market is already altered here with a large immigrant workforce where there are no restrictions on being a temporary worker - even for years or decades. They just have fewer rights. And it doesn't even work as intended. Let's say that Apple wants to hire a permanent employee directly. The PERM process takes a year. Should every company just wait for a year so that DOL can get it together before they can hire employees ? They do what the current regulations permit - bring them as temp workers and let the PERM thing resolve in the background.

Sure there is. The fact that permanent residency costs money and is often desirable means that there is value in a PERM position over a comparable one with no path to permanent residency. Therefore it is only natural for applicants to require less money to find the compensation desirable.

I'm not sure this is obvious. 1) Apple is a multi-national company, and hires an employee in the UK. 2) This employee relocates to the US

At what point do they displace the US citizen? All Apple jobs are not earmarked for US citizens (+residents, etc...), and they're already doing the job when they move to the US. Unless they're hired abroad for the express purpose of relocating to the US, then it's not "obvious" to me that they've displaced anyone.

Suppose I work in an org with dev teams in multiple countries. If I relocate from one site to another, am I freeing up a slot in the country I leave and taking one in the country I move to?

My comment argues that independent of government policy, relocating an existing employee from one country to another does not consume a position that was otherwise free, unless the employee was hired expressly for the purpose of relocation.

There is a special visa for this. In the US it is an L1 visa.

If one quits, nothing says you'll find another one, and you may keep going with one less person.

Hiring workers does not displace other workers because they come with increased demand for labor of their own. It does increase specialization on the team because you need to find comparative advantage, but that's nearly as much of an issue.

Anyhow his theory rests on assumptions that are nonsensical in today’s economy.[1]

Instead we have “labor arbitrage” which is to say workers being displaced.

[1] https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1674...

PERM applies to both EB2 and EB3 (so in real world anyone making from as low as $50k+/year depending on role qualifies) and most bodyshops apply for green card for all employees - it's just part of business cost. For EB2 PhD is not needed - MS from online paper mill is enough. For EB3, any degree works.

It's not tens of thousands in cost - it's below $10k all in. PERM Fees to USCIS are around $1200.

The whole system is abused to the end and need to be completely gutted and redone so high end engineer working for Google making $700k was differentiated from Wipro employee making $80k. Right now they are in the same queue. Prevailing wage is a joke as it does not include stock options and does not reflect real salary levels.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/NASA-Scientist-Salaries-E73...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/senior-scient...

I no longer know the current prices for EB2 total cost. But years back I know the cost was >10K+ per employee, accounting for multiple filings, expedited filings, lawyer fee, etc. I doubt it would be below 10K now. Even an NIW can cost 15K easily by going to a law firm and personally haggle the price with them. Can you tell me how do you know EB2 cost less than 10K?

An online paper mill graduate would have a very hard time passing EB2 vetting. Where would they get the paper citations, the impact, the achievements required? Unless they have years of experience in which they made clear they are valuable enough to the field. That is why I said experienced masters. And you think USCIS don't look at what institution the applicant comes from?

Nope. Not at all. I am rather intimately familiar with lot of people who have gone through that vaunted EB2 vetting with their fake US or foreign degrees, fake job experiences at fake companies with fake addresses and so on.

Few may get caught but most of them will get through the system with enough persistence.

NASA scientists don’t work on rockets; they design experiments for space missions and stuff like that.

Nurses make way less than 700k and should probably be the absolute top of the list.

Would that explain why their salaries have skyrocketed over the past few decades?

MBA education system is irrelevant too as it does not produce CEOs - it produces L4/L5 PMs few of whom after 30 years of stellar career will climb to be CEOs.

There is society need to drive down unreasonable salaries (700k at Google) - at minimum more cool stuff will be done in US. It’s much less clear that there is society need to drive down middle class salaries.

Citizens of Republics are given the inherent right to debate matters of public policy concern.

actually, nurses are. The process apple discriminated in from the article, nurses are considered by statute to be "approved" so they just move on to the next step (i140/i485 or visa) which is just a rubber stamp assuming all the documents are in order.

> nurses to bypass the PERM certification process is the Schedule A designation. Schedule A is a list of pre-certified occupations that the Department of Labor (DOL) has determined there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available. Because of this, employers seeking to hire foreign workers in these occupations do not need to go through the labor certification process, which is what PERM involves.

It's not rigorous or demanding; it's a mostly pointless bureaucratic exercise in bogus paperwork where lawyers and the gov. make bank. From the article : It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions," the DOJ said.

>Apple actually felt it was worth it

Apple doesn't feel. It's just commonsense and market pressure. The alternative would be indefinite indentured servitude.

Dept. of Labor takes a year to evaluate these PERM applications. PERM has charming and quaint requirements like taking out an ad in a Sunday newspaper so that applicants can apply and other nonsense. All while the employee is already working for the company on a visa. The whole thing is farcical.

Well, that certainly explains why I saw Lucid advertising in a New Orleans free newspaper and applied and got nothing but a rejection.

> Often, it requires an advance degree and higher qualification than H1B too, PhDs or experienced masters.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the PERM process applies when H1B holders seek to gain permanent residency too - at least that's been my experience. It also applies to the L1 etc:

https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/h-1b-green-card-transitio...

PERM certification is required to get a GC on an H1B (it's not needed to get an H1B, just required when the H1B holder seeks to get permanent residency).

There's another side to this story that the media reporting almost never mentions on this; many in the PERM process have lived in the USA for a long time and established families, children, communities etc. To deny them during PERM literally means in many cases to ship them and their American children "home" to a country they may not have seen for 20 years. In some cases the American kids won't even be able to speak the main language of their parent's birth country.

The solution as always is pretty simple - we need to divorce immigration status from employment - the processes should not be linked. This would at a stroke remove incentives for less scrupulous employers to abuse the system too.

If even a law trying to let US-educated PhDs getting an H1B easier (just to work, not GC) get blocked, you know how anti-immigration the current political climate is.

That's being generous. I'm pretty sure that for people born in India the backlog is well over 100 years. The reason being that only 7500 green cards per year can be issued to people of any particular nationality. If there are 750k Indians with approved GC applications under employment category, that's a 100 year backlog. I'm sure there's a statistic somewhere, and I remember reading an article a couple of years back that claimed that this particular backlog has surpassed 90 years, so it's not unthinkable that today it's over 100.

EB2 final action date for Indian nationals is currently at 01JAN12. Which means that USCIS is currently processing applications from almost 12 years ago. Which means they have to wait a decade before their application even gets approved.

There are people that will quite literally never see an EB2 or EB3 green card in their lives despite having an approved application. The only viable path to a green card for those is marrying a US citizen, period. (as that category has no cap or quota whatsoever)

So it does not help retention in the way you believe.

It is beneficial for retention because companies who don't apply for green cards for employees will lose them to firms that apply.

I think you mean cheaper employee.

When I clicked the link, I thought this article was going to be something like "non-US citizens get an extra $10k in perks because these companies do all their visa work for them, and US citizens don't need a visa". But it's something much more obscure that doesn't matter.

I work for a fully remote company. Most of us are based in the US but the company also hires people from some other countries through some kind of agency. Even though many, probably a majority of the US-based people are immigrants (myself included), and many don't speak English any better than the agency people, there's still somehow a clear divide. The agency people are great - talented, skilled, no issues. But somehow they understand the business less. Their contributions are purely technical. It's clear that the company could not just can us all and hire the same number of agency guys, but it's hard to explain why.

My previous employer once tried to outsource some stuff to India and sent a guy over there to oversee it. It didn't go well. But we had lots of Indian people before and since in the company, and they were great. They had the same background, same education. But they were local to the company.

I often think of the first iPhone as an extreme example of what I'm trying to say. It was built in China using parts sourced from China. But it was invented in California, and it had to be. From the inventors and the builders there's a sort of spectrum, a range of people, like the developers who conceived and wrote the first killer apps - and the closer you are to the inventing side of things, the closer you need to be to the heart of the company.

If I had to put sum it up in a word, I'd say it's "ambiguity". Knowing what to do when you don't have exact instructions requires you to be steeped in the same culture as the CEO and the main market. This isn't a fixed thing: I'm sure there's a market for luxury devices in China now that Americans find it hard to understand. But in general the countries that are the most developed have already experienced what other countries are going through, and thus they are uniquely positioned to dictate what the next big thing is.

So companies will always have to do some hiring locally, and the harder the job, the more important it is to be local.

Simply speaking, it's better to expand vertically because it's a lot easier to work with people in the same time zone. That's one reason tech is on the west coast.

Because people are not automatons, there are often situations where a company has offices in, say, New York and Zurich, and some employees in the New York office moved from Zurich and some employees in the Zurich office moved from New York.

If you're afraid of foreign competition, you should be worried about H1B and similar visas (visas for foreigners willing to slot into a normal "skilled" position), which this article isn't touching on at all. Those are the visas of your peers that companies are willing to hire extranationally.

While it's true these people already work there etc. etc. EB2, just like EB3, requires the DOL certification that "there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment". [1]

This sucks for firms like Apple because there are quite enough U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take a whole bunch of jobs that are being held by a BS with 5 years of experience... Imagine you are an officer of the U.S. government and a lawyer from Apple sends you an application for a, for example, front end developer. Will you honestly believe that there are literally no U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take such a job? At Apple no less. It's not "some folks won't take a job at Apple/FB/Google/etc for political reasons, so there!". It's literally a claim that there are no US citizens or LPRs who could do that job. How credible you'd think such a claim is?

1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/perm...

Very credible, because people already employed don’t really count. It doesn’t matter at what company.

Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

And that’s how it works. Otherwise there would be no need for immigration in this sector at all.

Why don't they count? Already employed people are recruited by Apple, I get spammed by Apple recruiters, I know a dozen of people who had been poached by Apple from various companies. Apple does hire people who are already employed, they pay quite a bit more so many employed people are looking if not for increased prestige then for increased TC.

>Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

I am not sure I follow, this is obviously false on its face. Why exactly can not it be filled?

Because eventually you’ll run out of people that can be hired.

Unless you’re making an argument that there are more software developers than job openings in the US, which is patently false.

And more importantly, this case is more about people who were already employed at Apple, on a non-immigrant visa, that Apple wished to retain permanently. I see no actual wrongdoing here. A tried and tested employee is ALWAYS better than an unknown one.

I am not sure I am following again. Have you worked anywhere at all or know anybody who worked somewhere? Ask them, the positions get filled, nobody runs out of people, and Apple is doubly so.

>Unless you’re making an argument that there are more software developers than job openings in the US, which is patently false.

No, I am making argument that there are able, qualified and willing US software developers, or any other professionals, available to take any job at Apple.

PERM is one stage in the Green Card process. (it goes: PERM -> I140 -> I485. https://maggio-kattar.com/three-stages-employer-sponsored-pe...)

https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/gree...

Wage depression is a function of being willing and able to work in the field, not of residency type.

Residency type can only depress individual wages for the person with the odd residency.

You're saying that Apple can't find people from less-developed countries with these specific credentials and then offer them a starting salary that's $100k under what they would have needed to offer to someone from California?

> because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American once they have EB2.

Equal to an American in legal rights perhaps, but there is no right to competitive pay.

The theoretical factor that's supposed to depress pay for workers on non-immigrant visas is that they don't have easy job mobility - the bar to hire an H-1B is much higher than to hire a US native worker. Once you have an EB-2 (an immigrant visa, that entitles you to a Green Card), that no longer applies - modulo national-security type positions that require citizenship you're just as hirable as a US native.

There’s more to it than that, but that’s one of the big ones. Have you worked with foreign contractors/outsourcing before? If so you know why jumping to another job would be difficult.

I hope that by this you mean Native Americans. Or are colonizers now considered native citizens?

> the company acknowledged in a statement that it had "unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard"

I'd love to know what sequence of events led to this very archaic but unintentional violation! Should be a fun read!

Meta got in trouble with the DOJ for the same thing. They advertised for positions in newspapers and only accepted paper applications for PERM positions, unlike their other jobs which are advertised online. This is mainly because you don't want anyone actually applying for the PERM roles, since you need to prove no minimally (not most) qualified US citizen or PR could be found.

I think long term this is going to make getting PERM approved more difficult. It already takes 2-3 years now (without any audits) to get an I-140 (green card) application approved, not to mention getting the card can take decades in some cases.

People on H1B work visa can't stay on it for more than 6 years unless they actually get through PERM and get I-140, so I'm expecting this change will have a chilling effect on employers sponsoring work visas and applying for PERM unless it's a very specialized role. Why would you sponsor someone if you know they can't work in the country long term ? Hard times ahead for people on visa.

It's basically Dubai++

Let's stop pretending that immigration law can be changed in the current political climate.

It's a remote, theoretical possibility, rather than a practical one.

Apple just makes too damn much money to worry overmuch about salaries. If anything, a lot of managers like H1Bs, because they can drive them like slaves. I've seen exactly that, in front of my own eyes. It's pretty disturbing, if you are a manager like me.

> In one email exchange after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt’s note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.

> Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel in 2010 settled a U.S. Department of Justice probe by agreeing not to enter into such no-hire deals in the future. The four companies had since been fighting the civil antitrust class action.

0. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement-i...

We're likely talking about favoring H-1B visas; predominantly Indian, and predominantly male, with a median age of 34.[0] Do individual hiring managers have individual, personal biases? Yes, but what do you call a collective group who all exhibit the same bias? We can speculate about their personal reasons, but keep in mind that H-1B workers are inordinate victims of wage theft! [1]

> Thousands of skilled migrants employed by HCL Technologies—an India-based IT staffing firm that places H-1B workers at top corporations like Disney, FedEx, and Google—appear to have been underpaid by at least $95 million

So perhaps it is simple economics: precarious immigrant workers are easier to steal from.

0. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/H1B_...

1. https://www.epi.org/press/new-epi-report-reveals-wage-theft-...

FAANG engineering shops are not like this at all. Tech teams on their own initiative or with very general charters conceive, create, and release products. If product “requirements” are even written down, there’s a good chance the lead engineers on the project are coauthors. Engineers beyond the entry level are expected to be curious, creative, self-directed… basically bounce around a general problem space creating value wherever and however they can, as long as stakeholders sign off prior to any disruptive changes and there’s a measurable impact to cite for year-end perf.

The value created can be mind-boggling - and so can the compensation packages, at no real loss to management. Any team’s backlog of opportunities is deep, and all of them are much more valuable than any amount of wages that could conceivably be spent chasing them. You don’t just want the job done to spec at minimum cost - you want the most capable and innovative people you can get to be at the whiteboard thinking of jobs it would be interesting to do, because the carrying cost if they’re just okay is insignificant, and the upside if they pull something really brilliant is unlimited.

The PERM application was almost certainly submitted for an existing employee, who had most likely been employed with Apple for somewhere between 2-4 years. Thanks to bureaucratic nonsense they were then required to open up that position to outsiders instead, and if they found someone else who could be hired fire the person that had been doing the job well enough that Apple was willing to pick up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to go ahead with their PERM application.

It sounds like a larger power asymmetry and as an employer, you want that as large as possible.

I mean it also increases stress on both ends, which affects executive function so the parties become handicapped by the relationship, but that's apparently less valuable than the large power differentials to many.

I wonder if there's quantitative studies of firms performances with respect to this. If the theory is right, it's long term one of the more disadvantageous strategies. (Using Apple as N=1 doesn't cut it as a study here)

Apple is a publicly traded company whose shareholders would not tolerate overpaying for labor.

Further: Apple was caught colluding with other major tech industry employers with regards to hiring/salary.

So please do go on about how Apple doesn't care about labor costs.

And also, look at the wages and benefits for Apple Store employees which are shit for the level of technical expertise they're expected to have and the products they're selling (there's usually at least some correlation between compensation and the cost of goods being sold - obviously not anything approaching linearity.)

Then look at how Apple store staff are starting to unionize, much to the terror of their Head of Retail, who likely makes half a million dollars a year in cash compensation alone - $250/hour, which is more than ten times the base wage for a retail employee (supposedly now $22/hour.)

Your naivete is pretty stunning. There isn't a single corporate employer on the planet who doesn't do everything they can to minimize labor costs.

If a company did "everything" they could to minimize labor costs they'd just fire everyone. But they don't, because this is a bad way to run a growth company. Focus on improving what you can get from them instead of managing them out.

Similarly, people say companies care about profit over everything, but they obviously don't because, say, scented candle companies sell scented candles and not fentanyl.

Yeah, you know, this is a professional forum. I may not be important to your career, but a hell of a lot of other people that are, hang out, here.

That's one reason I don't write stuff like that.

Grow up.

I do find your implication shocking though. Do all Apple managers feel like they should get in the way of someones career progression over a disagreement like the one stated?

I'm not an Apple manager. Never have been one.

I didn't "threaten" anyone, and it's kind of an ... interesting ... leap of "logic" to have arrived at that inference.

All I said, and, if you go back and read it, you'll see this, was that this is a professional forum. It isn't LinkedIn (Thank Yog-Sothoth), but it is probably more relevant than LI, for the careers of many folks here.

I'm retired. I'm not looking for work.

The same cannot be said for most others, participating here.

I find it rather depressing, to see bright, talented folks, letting future managers know that they don't play well with others. As a former (non-Apple) manager, I can tell you that team cohesion is even more important than rockstar coders.

When we share on a forum like this, we are talking to our future peers and managers. We are telling them what it would be like, to have us working for|with them.

No one is doing me any damage, by attacking me. They may be making themselves feel a bit better about themselves, but I guarantee that their propensity for combativeness does not go unnoticed. When our first interaction-ever, with another person, is a direct insult, then that tells people something about the way we interact with our peers.

If we believe that managers would be happy to recruit warriors, then I guess it's OK. I just haven't met any managers (and I've known many) that prefer having staff that like to "stir the pot." That’s not always a good thing, as a truly creative, high-quality workplace will have disagreements; just not poo-flinging matches.

Sure, my original statement was probably provocative. I didn't mean it to be so, but it was interpreted that way. I didn't mean that Apple, as an organization, wasn't interested in saving money, just that the Ockham's Razor thingy says that it's likely to be individual (probably former) Apple managers that were chiefly responsible for the suit. Kind of basic human nature.

One of the ways that I try to be a good citizen on HN, is to not get into fights, here, so that's all I'll say. I apologize (sincerely) for the provocative nature of my original comment. I didn't mean it to be that way, but understand how it was interpreted. That's on me. I should have worded it different.

Now, why don't we all just take a few breaths, and remember that we're (probably) all grown-ups?

Perfect workers.

American graduates have these starry eyes and want to work mostly in two types of companies FAANG or early stage startups... Who's going to go to work at pharma companies, banks, electric companies?

The hiring pool could be larger, but HR and hiring managers don't want men over 50.

For instance, American citizens are not going to become farmworkers even if you paid them FAANG engineer wages. They just aren't.

I think to attract people to certain careers, anytime after they're born is too late. You have to have started with their parents. Good chess players are good because they started at age 5, not because they went to school for it.

Brain drain is something they bought into during the cold war and this idea that "they don't have talent" is ridiculous. They have a shit ton of homegrown talent and are also more than willing to hire your talent to further monopolize and supplement it.

How can we expect to operate a democracy when workers have this gun to their head?

The system allows it, why not take advantage of such.

That would boost wages for all other workers and discriminatorily raise costs against orgs that do not want to “hire American”.

That’s fine too. If it’s too low, companies can lobby to have it increased. If it’s too high, workers can lobby to have it reduced.

There is no fixed sized pie. How many big tech companies were founded or run by immigrants or their children?

The auction system to maximize the fees collected would apply regardless of the number of visas.

The various body shops are one thing, but I've seen multiple large companies where they have incompetent individuals of the same nationality under a manager (maybe second level) as well - whole teams. 75+% on H1b. These are "wage draining" visas, not special skillsets.

If it was actually special skillsets, I agree with you.

But FAANG isn't going to leave Silicon Valley. If your theory says that's a good idea, you should ditch it for one that has empirical evidence for working.

So basically the only way to find any real job posting is to spam-apply to everything. Is there a service for that?

But the fact is, that no one is happy with the immigration process. It's utterly inhumane and expensive.

And to add to that, you don’t know how long it’s going to take. It’s all rate limited in a very opaque fashion, instead of just having a simple to understand but high bar.

In either case, the US as a whole benefits so overwhelmingly from these types of immigrants. It’s really the best and brightest. They just come pre-trained and start paying high taxes immediately.

Even though FB/Meta is hiring again and you apply with a referral link, even as US citizen you still get no responses.

No email, no phone call, totally ghosted.

Almost seems like their job board is to appease DOJ rules but they hire on other criteria.

The article doesn't come right out and say it, but the case seems to have turned on PERM jobs being only available when there isn't a citizen/refugee/permanent-resident available to fill the position and that applying in paper was an unreasonable hurdle to these classes and that the positions should be advertised as widely as other jobs to ensure they aren't missing potential protected class workers who might like to apply.

Just look at the academic hiring phds for aerospace related department in US and tell me its not filled with hispanics.

When you start pointing fingers at people other than Indian/SEA and Chinese now it gets into the racist territory.

Observed that Hispanics hire Hispanics.

lol.

Every FAANG is guilty of this. Every startup is guilty of this. There is no law less adhered to in the US.

Everyone posts the notice on the office fridge or the receptionist stand or runs some newspaper ad to cover the nominal letter of the law. It's completely pointless.

Just to add some context here.

In other words, professional societies are complicit in this too.

In our industry it’s rare for condition 2 to be false, even when condition 1 is true. So usually they can just be brazen about not trying to find American candidates. Regardless, non-discrimination rules still apply.

Opposite in the sense of the direction of the discrimination.

It was the same with disabilities, leading to the creation of the ADA. Companies would argue that they shouldn't have to hire someone in a wheelchair because it would cost them money to build wheelchair ramps and other accessibility aids.

You aren't allowed to exclude somebody who would otherwise be eligible because their work permit has an expiry date

You get a work visa. There are typically 4 options. There are 4 major options (there are others that are less common):

1. H1B: requires a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. There is an annual quota. There are now more applicants than visas so there is a lottery. If you don't get picked, try again next year. H1B is issued for 3 years and can be renewed for another 3. Beyond that, you have to leave or file a PERM application and you can stay while it's pending. H1B is transferable with minimal effort to a new employer;

2. TN visa: available to Canadians. It's a 3 year nonimmigrant intent visa that requires. It can technically be renewed repeatedly but CBP is free to decide you're really living here and just deny your visa. The conservative approach is that TN holders wishing to immigrate will transfer to an H1B when possible. H1Bs can have weird conditions like when and how often you can re-enter the country. Some countries don't allow re-entry beyond the first year so leaving means going to a consulate and applying for a new visa;

3. E3 visa: much like a TN but available to Australians. It's 2 years, nonimmigrant intent and not transferable. There's a quota but it's never been hit. Many wishing to get a green card will also try to get an H1B at some point;

4. L1 visa: large companies use this for transfers. Work in Canada or London for a year and then get transferred.

This brings us to PERM. It's basically a 2 step process:

1. File a PERM. This involves many steps like getting a labor certification. This takes 6-24+ months. USCIS may randomly audit you, which can add 1-2 years. They may have a reason too but but they also randomly audit a large number of applications, allegedly to stop the system being gamed. The reality is that it's arbitrary and capricious. Things may just randomly take 2 years longer for no reason at all. Once your number comes up (more on this below), you go to the next step;

2. File an adjustment of status ("AoS"). There are 2 forms that can be filed concurrently (I-141 and I-485 IIRC). This should only take 6-12 months. It depends on your service center though. If there's something weird about your application it may take longer with multiple rounds of RFE ("Requests for Evidence") that each take months to be examined.

PERMs have a total quota and a per-country quota (of 7% of the total). And by "country" I mean "country of birth". Your passport doesn't matter at all. If you're born to Norwegian parents in Mumbai, you'll be in the India queue and you don't want to be there. Expect to wait 10-30 years because there is a backlog in the millions.

Occasionally there's some talk of Congress reforming this but nothing much has changed in a long time.

So where's the abuse? It takes 2 forms:

1. The Department of Labor is meant to ensure you're not underpaid (ie exploited). But they look at average pay for software engineers in a geographic area. For a Big Tech company, this could be substantially higher. But they don't have to pay you that higher amount technically because you're beholden to the company. If you leave you need to file a new PERM (but you keep your priority date). Still, this might add a year or two; and

2. Oncd you have your green card you don't need work authorization anymore so you can freely take a new job. So if you're from India you're effectively an indentured servant for decades because of the backlog.

So H1Bs have no per-country quota but green cards do. We issue way more H1Bs to Indian-born workers than we issue green cards to so the queue is only getting longer. Bear in mind tooo that if you're a worker with a spouse and two children you'll need 4 from the quota not 1.

So these bodyshop companies that employ a lot of Indian nationals flood the H1B pipeline. It's why there's a lottery. The companies don't care who does and doesn't get a visa. These are relatively low paying jobs, which in practice have bad conditions. The threat of being fired keepes workers from demanding better pay and conditions let alone leaving.

Was apple engaging in these practices? I have no idea (and certainly no direct knowledge). But that's what PERM abuse looks like.

Honestly, work visas should just automatically convert to a green card after 6 years.

> Honestly, work visas should just automatically convert to a green card after 6 years.

Taking us from an extreme form of indentured servitude to the kind that was commonly practiced in the 18th century. An improvement!

Theoretically if they find a qualified candidate they have to fire the worker who asked for PERM, and hire the candidate. Since PERM applications are seen as a perk for good employees, and having to fire the employee who asked for PERM if the process finds someone, companies hide the job applications, and find any reason to reject any applicant.

The whole process is ridiculous.

This doesn't seem like the only option to me. They could hire the newly discovered qualified candidate AND keep the existing employee on the H1B visa and try again.

For companies that are continually recruiting and have an incredibly tough interview process, it doesn't sound like a disaster to unintentionally come across someone good.

Because if we didn't, we'd have random people just crossing the border at will and living in the country with no repercussions whatsoever.

Oh wait, huh. So, why do we make skilled people prove with mountains of paperwork and credentials that they should be allowed to enter the country?

This is a slap on the wrist.

1) You can hire temp workers on visas relatively easily and in large numbers. This benefits employers, politicians, economy, etc.

2) These workers need permanent status. US immigration is uniquely regressive in that everything flows through the employer in most cases and visa holders have no agency. So the employer needs to petition for a "permanent" employee.

3) So although these people are already employed, the employer needs to go through a PERM process where they advertise the job and claim to the gov. that they couldn't hire anyone else and this is the most qualified employee for the job.

4) Although it's a farce, DOJ gets mad if there is a perception that the employer tried to make the PERM process more favorable to the employee they already have.

But no - your immigration law firm will tell you that you absolutely can't do that, and that you have to pretend to hire into some kind of imaginary position that reflects the knowledge and skills of someone in the job market who would qualify but for the fact that they don't have skills that could only be acquired at your firm.

This long process incentives non-citizens to do work at below market rates and to put up with less than ideal employment treatment. Which is great for most businesses as they can get a dev for cheap that they can work for long hours and hold their current residency in the US hostage (it's not a simple process to switch employers).

However, the law has on the books for programs like this and H1B that a company has to have first failed to fill their position with a US citizen. Apple is not unique here in fudging the "tried to fill the position" requirement. I suspect there's more than a few big name company's HR departments seeing this news and getting a little worried.

I should note, the law also says PERM employees should be payed market rate... but market rate is a flexible thing and PERM employees are much less likely to complain.

Getting labor certification involves demonstrating that you've made a good faith effort to hire a US native worker to fill the position. So you have to try to hire into the role; but you really don't want the search to succeed - because you've already got a good employee that's a known quantity.

Getting labor certification is a pre-requisite to getting an I-140, which is a pre-requisite to the employee getting the green card. Failing to achieve labor certification just delays the entire process and means yet more paperwork and time with the immigration attorneys.