Comment by darth_avocado
20 hours ago
This keeps coming up every so often and most commenters on HN are completely ignorant of how the immigration system works, but have strong opinions about it, therefore it seems that everything is nefarious.
The real problem here is that the way the current system is set up, you have to prove that there are no citizens available for a position by listing a job and interviewing candidates. The problem with that is that you will never be able to prove that by this method. Say you have 1000 jobs for a specific role in the economy and 700 US citizens qualified to do that job and are already employed. The minute you try to file PERM for the 1 foreign national, if you list the job out, the chances of at least 1 person applying out of the 700 are very high because, you know, people change jobs. This puts companies and immigrants in a very difficult position because you literally cannot prove the shortage at an industry level on your own using this method. So they just have to resort to working within the laws to make it work.
This all would be completely unnecessary if congress fixes the immigration laws and asks BLS to setup market tests that are data driven to establish high demand roles.
I am not sure if your comment is directed at me but I immigrated to the US. In my case there were probably no more than 1000 people in the whole world willing and able to do my job. It was advertised in the industry job boards along with required by law newspapers. Very few people applied and none of them had been a US citizen or LPR. This is what EB immigration is for. You are welcome to lobby for another EB category based on data and tests, but you should not be allowed to commit fraud in lieu of such a category in the meantime.
EB system is pretty broad. If you really were in a position that only 1000 people in the world were able to do your job, you should’ve applied through EB1, which is designed for such people and also does not require the PERM process and therefore the job listings. EB2 and EB3 are designed for labor gaps in the industry which isn’t the same as extraordinary talent such as yours, and requires the PERM process. EB3 in fact also allows completely unskilled workers to file for permanent residency. Like I explained in the parent comment, the congress put a system to evaluate labor gaps, which is flawed. Following the rules set up by the system isn’t fraud.
>you should’ve applied through EB1
Why? If you know as much as you claim about immigration you should know that any EB1 application will dwarf any EB2 application in amount of work and documentation needed. Also, having rare skillset is not enough to get EB1, as you also might know. You need to meet a set of requirements, none of if which has anything to do with rarity of the skillset.
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You have highlighted the problem I was not able to articulate. This kind of requirement “open the job to local candidates and only if no one exists will we allow you to hire from outside” exists in multiple places.
It exists for internal candidates - often companies are encouraged to fill vacancies by first allowing internal candidates to apply. Obviously this creates a cascading effect where a new role opens up in the candidates old position once they fill up the new one. At some point they just need to hire externally or we will be perpetually filling up vacancies.
I wonder how every company managed to understand the cascading effect and just hire externally instead.
TL;DR I don't want to compete with under-priced outsourced labor. I gladly accept peers and betters who expand the market by bringing the best and the brightest to the same national team.
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I'm all for immigration reform in ways that empower the workers.
Want to bring in the best talent from elsewhere? Fine, Make sure they cost the company MORE than you'd pay a US worker, with the government getting the excess as a tax on hiring non-local labor.
That worker should also be either a guest worker OR on a pathway to citizenship at their own discretion.
The job adverts that are being talked about are part of the PERM process that is required for the “pathway to citizenship” for workers that are already here for an extended period of time.
What is also part of the process, is the requirement that you pay more than the median wages. Undercutting wages will get this petition denied and the process itself costs thousands of dollars on top of the thousands of dollars it takes to file for the underlying visa.
Again, the immigration system doesn’t work as you think it does. Yes there are abuses and those need to be addressed and I’m fully onboard with reforms that fix it. But the first step would be to understand the system and how it works.
I'd rather they cost like 4X the median worker's wage, with at least half of that collected as taxes by the government.
It should be a notable cost, and the worker needs to be making a premium for it to be a rush on immigration.
Further note, this is to also encourage more _entry level_ jobs for local workers and train up citizens to become more highly skilled workers.