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Comment by genericone | Hacker News Reader

Based on what I'm reading, and what I've experienced, I would say a lot of Bay Area companies "[create] a hiring system in which it [denies] qualified U.S. workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs that [the company] instead sought to channel to temporary visa holders [the company] wanted to sponsor for green cards".

In some cases, these companies don't want to sponsor the employee for a green-card, but simply are satisfied with the work being done by the visa-holder, and want to continue to pay for that work. The companies don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up.

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> The companies don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up.

I can't imagine any sane company would. Hiring people is an expensive process, not to mention the morale hit of essentially firing someone for things out of their control. If i was a company, i too would want to stand by an employee if they were doing a good job.

> If i was a company, i too would want to stand by an employee if they were doing a good job.

Not if it meant violating labor laws, no?

I don't think that interpretation offers much insight. Presumably, they want to comply with the law and want to retain their visa holders. Both, at the same time, if possible. Whether they actually do both is a different question.

Also seems like allowing for it to continue would fail to discourage the companies from hiring the employees in the first place, assuming they were initially hired in a discriminatory way.

Want != will != should.

I want to sit on my ass and watch netflix all day. I don't actually sit on my ass and watch netflix all day despite wanting to and technically being able to.

If they don't want to have to look for qualified local talent every-time the visa renewal comes up, and the employee is being a valuable and productive member of society, that seems like an ideal case for some kind of permanent residency program. Maybe it could involve some kind of colored card?

What an absolute mess this whole system is.

It's not limited to the Bay Area. They do the same thing in the Midwest for industries with high-turnover. They use the same, obviously dishonest tactics, like only advertising positions in the classified sections of local newspapers, where no one would ever look for them.

I'm fully in favor of immigration (mom is an immigrant and so is my partner), but the H1-B system was obviously designed to create a tier of second-class workers who fear losing their sponsorship and thus tolerate lower wages and worse treatment. These visas need to be fully portable at any time, offered for positions only at above market rates, with greencard queue times also being drastically reduced and made independent of employer sponsorship.

> They use the same, obviously dishonest tactics, like only advertising positions in the classified sections of local newspapers, where no one would ever look for them.

As stupid as it sounds, that's not their decision. It is a part of the PERM process that the employer has to follow. I've started in a different comment here, the rules are extremely outdated.

I believe the relevant section is §656.17 Basic labor certification process Section (f). (you'll have to google it, I couldn't find a good source with a direct link)

It quite literally says "newspapers".

This sounds like a broken process.

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