They can, which is why many companies do the bare minimum malicious compliance to claim thet they attempted to hire Americans for these jobs. Things like ads in the local newspaper that 99% of qualified Americans will never see:
Those newspaper tech job ads have been going on for at least the last... 20 years. When you see those, the company already has the role filled, they just need a justification for the visa. "We tried to find a US worker but failed!" Which honestly may or may not be true, I think the ad is just standard procedure at this point.
the newspaper ad is not for H1B, it is for PERM process, which is different.
Second, the local newspaper requirement is created by the Dept of Labor itself, specifically to protect local workers in the area where Labor Market Test is being done!!!
It is not malicious compliance by firms, it is goodwill compliance by firms, to whatever DOL requires them to do. Dont like it? ask your DOL why.
Third, paper ads create audit trail that DOL wants, they dont recognize e-boards like linkedin/indeed as their audit trail is considered "soft"
Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? If you're going to take this wildly cynical approach you should at least do a more proper comparison....
I think forcing this comparison shows a lack of empathy for how compromised of a position the H1B really is.
If I lose my job I have unemployment insurance, cobra benefits, personal savings, and I don’t require another employer to sponsor my visa. If I lose my job the most likely outcome is I find another one after searching a few months.
If someone on an H1B visa loses their job the most likely outcome is they are forced to leave the country.
> Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right?
I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least, and you can save up as a countermeasure to the loss of the paycheck. Bad as it is it's not comparable to getting deported after a couple of months.
First, I think the H1B does need genuine reform to keep the big companies from gaming the lottery system.
Having said that, I’m not sure banning H1Bs or immigrants in general is going to help American workers. Take tech for instance. Many tech leaders are immigrants. If they hasn’t taken in the Jensen Huang’s, Sergei Brin’s, Sundar Pichai, etc… the companies they lead and jobs they created would be elsewhere. It’s amazing how immigrants have shaped the US tech scene:
The 45th president was supposed to deliver that reform. Then they went all out and... commissioned a study. Then they did nothing, once the puppet masters let it be know they didn't want to lose their servile work force chained to their visas with a green card dangled in front of them.
Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans.
I know an awful lot of skilled people that live in the US, pay high taxes, and for whose lives have been thrown into disarray by backwards, anti-immigration policy like this illegal $100k fee, but it's just the beginning of the ways that anti-immigration policy is being used to make the US far weaker, just in order for pyrrhic harm to immigrants. I'm pissed about it.
>Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans.
Yes, because the citizens of a country (through their elected representatives) have absolute control over who they choose to allow into their country. Even blocking a brilliant surgeon or inventor, if they so choose. There is no moral right to come to America (or any other country).
Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. Furthermore, it was never a question of the US had a right to make these decisions, of course it does.
Do you find the argument "I have the right to make any decision I want therefor it justifies bad decisions" convincing? I sure don't.
That's false. You can apply for an H1B while in the US (unless there has been another recent and random change to long standing policy for no reason except to make lives miserable).
H1B renewals are also common, and happen within the US.
TFA is about teachers in Alaska. I'm guessing from a brief skim that no Americans want to be school teachers in Alaska for the money local school boards are offering.
This actually highlights two dumb things about the USA: prejudice against immigrants, and unwillingness to fund education.
This sounds like a self-correcting problem, if you don't allow immigration. Schools will have to pay more for teachers, which will raise salaries for native born teachers, instead of paying a lower rate to someone on a temporary work visa.
The matter is a little more complicated than that, because Alaska also has some of the nation's most stringent licensure requirements with no alternative routes for high-demand low-supply subject area teachers. You could probably relax those artificial barriers to employment and get more Alaskans teaching without raising the salary as much as if you kept the licensure requirements. You could also promise student debt relief for teachers who serve in rural areas for a certain length of time.
Alaska is already one of the top states for educator pay, and as you know how US government has continioualy failed to solve problems by throwing more money at it, you know more money will simply cause more general inflation and will never solve it.
US already spends more for education with worse results
"The United States spent $15,500 per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level, which was 38 percent higher than the average of OECD countries3 reporting data ($11,300). The United States had the fifth highest expenditures per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level in 2019 after Luxembourg, Norway ($18,000), and Austria and the Republic of Korea ($15,900 each)."
Do you want to move to Alaska, and rural Alaska at that (although even “cities” in Alaska are rural by most standards)? You get to be thousands of miles from your existing community, you won’t have a grocery store nearby, there may even be no way to get into or out of your village except by plane. Maybe in the winter you’ll be totally snowed in for weeks at a time.
You could offer me twice what I make as a software engineer and I wouldn’t take the job.
Because in America, the boomers' retirement accounts are partially funded by insane college tuition (through insane college services and textbooks), so college has essentially become a guaranteed debt trap that gives you a lottery ticket to maybe be in the top 1%.
They post the jobs in physical newspaper classifieds in the middle of nowhere, and do not post the job on their normal website, because if they posted a real job they would get hundreds of applicants immediately. It’s a fraud but it was tolerated until recently
The H1B visa is explicitly designed for high skill (high paying) jobs which companies have (supposedly) demonstrated they cannot find enough citizen workers.
There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly.
You could also just have a more proactive government which punishes businesses for abusing the visa category.
"Immigrants taking good jobs" isn't an immigrant problem, it's a big-business problem
>There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly.
They can, which is why many companies do the bare minimum malicious compliance to claim thet they attempted to hire Americans for these jobs. Things like ads in the local newspaper that 99% of qualified Americans will never see:
https://www.newsweek.com/h1b-job-ads-green-cards-targeted-im...
Those newspaper tech job ads have been going on for at least the last... 20 years. When you see those, the company already has the role filled, they just need a justification for the visa. "We tried to find a US worker but failed!" Which honestly may or may not be true, I think the ad is just standard procedure at this point.
Fraud and dishonesty is the SOP. Whole thing needs to be burned down.
9 replies →
the newspaper ad is not for H1B, it is for PERM process, which is different.
Second, the local newspaper requirement is created by the Dept of Labor itself, specifically to protect local workers in the area where Labor Market Test is being done!!!
It is not malicious compliance by firms, it is goodwill compliance by firms, to whatever DOL requires them to do. Dont like it? ask your DOL why.
Third, paper ads create audit trail that DOL wants, they dont recognize e-boards like linkedin/indeed as their audit trail is considered "soft"
Being deported if you get fired is a basic job requirement. Keeps people in line.
Americans can't compete with that.
Well they can compete with that.
Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? If you're going to take this wildly cynical approach you should at least do a more proper comparison....
I think forcing this comparison shows a lack of empathy for how compromised of a position the H1B really is.
If I lose my job I have unemployment insurance, cobra benefits, personal savings, and I don’t require another employer to sponsor my visa. If I lose my job the most likely outcome is I find another one after searching a few months.
If someone on an H1B visa loses their job the most likely outcome is they are forced to leave the country.
5 replies →
> Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right?
I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least, and you can save up as a countermeasure to the loss of the paycheck. Bad as it is it's not comparable to getting deported after a couple of months.
2 replies →
First, I think the H1B does need genuine reform to keep the big companies from gaming the lottery system.
Having said that, I’m not sure banning H1Bs or immigrants in general is going to help American workers. Take tech for instance. Many tech leaders are immigrants. If they hasn’t taken in the Jensen Huang’s, Sergei Brin’s, Sundar Pichai, etc… the companies they lead and jobs they created would be elsewhere. It’s amazing how immigrants have shaped the US tech scene:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immig...
Second, when you ban immigrants/H1B, companies get around the ban by outsourcing to foreign countries.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/06/10/if-yo...
The 45th president was supposed to deliver that reform. Then they went all out and... commissioned a study. Then they did nothing, once the puppet masters let it be know they didn't want to lose their servile work force chained to their visas with a green card dangled in front of them.
[flagged]
“It was built by Americans and regardless would have continued to be built by Americans.”
The xenophobic ignorance of this sentence is breathtaking. America, of all places, is a nation built precisely by immigrants.
8 replies →
> They raise the cost of housing
Oh! how dare they! How can they even think of finding a place to live
1 reply →
Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans.
I know an awful lot of skilled people that live in the US, pay high taxes, and for whose lives have been thrown into disarray by backwards, anti-immigration policy like this illegal $100k fee, but it's just the beginning of the ways that anti-immigration policy is being used to make the US far weaker, just in order for pyrrhic harm to immigrants. I'm pissed about it.
>Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans.
Yes, because the citizens of a country (through their elected representatives) have absolute control over who they choose to allow into their country. Even blocking a brilliant surgeon or inventor, if they so choose. There is no moral right to come to America (or any other country).
Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. Furthermore, it was never a question of the US had a right to make these decisions, of course it does.
Do you find the argument "I have the right to make any decision I want therefor it justifies bad decisions" convincing? I sure don't.
2 replies →
> I know an awful lot of skilled people that live in the US
If they already live in the US, they're not applying for an H1B.
That's false. You can apply for an H1B while in the US (unless there has been another recent and random change to long standing policy for no reason except to make lives miserable).
H1B renewals are also common, and happen within the US.
TFA is about teachers in Alaska. I'm guessing from a brief skim that no Americans want to be school teachers in Alaska for the money local school boards are offering.
This actually highlights two dumb things about the USA: prejudice against immigrants, and unwillingness to fund education.
This sounds like a self-correcting problem, if you don't allow immigration. Schools will have to pay more for teachers, which will raise salaries for native born teachers, instead of paying a lower rate to someone on a temporary work visa.
The matter is a little more complicated than that, because Alaska also has some of the nation's most stringent licensure requirements with no alternative routes for high-demand low-supply subject area teachers. You could probably relax those artificial barriers to employment and get more Alaskans teaching without raising the salary as much as if you kept the licensure requirements. You could also promise student debt relief for teachers who serve in rural areas for a certain length of time.
>student debt relief
It already exists its called PSLF
Alaska is already one of the top states for educator pay, and as you know how US government has continioualy failed to solve problems by throwing more money at it, you know more money will simply cause more general inflation and will never solve it.
US already spends more for education with worse results
> unwillingness to fund education.
"The United States spent $15,500 per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level, which was 38 percent higher than the average of OECD countries3 reporting data ($11,300). The United States had the fifth highest expenditures per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level in 2019 after Luxembourg, Norway ($18,000), and Austria and the Republic of Korea ($15,900 each)."
Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
Do you want to move to Alaska, and rural Alaska at that (although even “cities” in Alaska are rural by most standards)? You get to be thousands of miles from your existing community, you won’t have a grocery store nearby, there may even be no way to get into or out of your village except by plane. Maybe in the winter you’ll be totally snowed in for weeks at a time.
You could offer me twice what I make as a software engineer and I wouldn’t take the job.
Maybe there aren't a ton of people in Alaska?
Because they were laid off?
We can, that's not the purpose of this.
They arent capable.
Because in America, the boomers' retirement accounts are partially funded by insane college tuition (through insane college services and textbooks), so college has essentially become a guaranteed debt trap that gives you a lottery ticket to maybe be in the top 1%.
They post the jobs in physical newspaper classifieds in the middle of nowhere, and do not post the job on their normal website, because if they posted a real job they would get hundreds of applicants immediately. It’s a fraud but it was tolerated until recently
[dead]
The H1B visa is explicitly designed for high skill (high paying) jobs which companies have (supposedly) demonstrated they cannot find enough citizen workers.
There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly.
You could also just have a more proactive government which punishes businesses for abusing the visa category.
"Immigrants taking good jobs" isn't an immigrant problem, it's a big-business problem
>There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly.
The Trump admin already did that too:
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-pro...