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Comment by jaywalk | Hacker News Reader

Up to $14.25 million in fines and restitution for defrauding the H-1B program and screwing over US citizens. Facebook won't even blink an eye at that amount. How about barring them from the H-1B program for 5 years? I think that would be a great start.

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Agreed. If the NCAA catches you buying dinner for a college athlete you can lose a number of scholarships for several years. Why wouldn't these violation of H1Bs come along with a fine and a loss of H1B access for x number of years? That would go a long way toward solving the problem.

That sounds like the player, who should be paid millions for plying gets punished for receiving the dinner, rather than the school.

The equivalent would be banning the H1b holder from the US. The NCAA is the model to follow if you want to make something more exploitative, not less

Say what you will about the NCAA but they do a good job ensuring a level playing field for all college athletes (despite being Nazis while doing it).

It's no fun hearing about poor athletes struggling to eat at college but, at the very least, the Manziels and the Gurleys of the US are held to an identical standard and that counts for something.

The scandals say otherwise. They are absolutely terrible at it.

The only efficiency they excel at is screwing over the players

When the students working at concession stand at a football game are paid while the players aren't, it's not a fair system. So many students get paid for what they do in conjunction with their studies. If a third string swimmer teaches lessons on weekends, nobody stops him from getting paid. The rules only seem to apply to top athletes.

If they actually had a case against Facebook and Facebook had caused actual harm the amount would be much higher.

Facebook probably only settled it instead of choosing to fight because it is barred from filling green cards while the case is still in progress, hurting its employees and its ability to hire.

Any company that has successfully filed an employment green card (especially at that scale) is favoring immigrants over citizens by definition. The EB green card rules are highly outdated and a reform is long overdue.

Yeah I know at least a half dozen folks who didnt join facebook or seriously thought about passing on facebook this year due to the greencard processing issues. Recruiters told them, "Zuck says it will be figured out by the end of the year" and I guess he was right.

It's already the largest amount ever recovered in a case of this nature. The fact is simply that, just like in so many other cases, the penalties are so low that it's just a cost of doing business for these large corporations.

Facebook "refused to recruit, consider, or hire qualified and available U.S. workers for over 2,600 positions."

The lawsuit was really about FB converting H1B workers, of whom they already hired, into permanent US workers. They post a PERM position and then have to apply the H1B worker to it due to outdated immigration laws.

They argued that a company should not be able to do that if they can hire a minimally qualified US candidate, AKA someone who checks the job requirements.

No, this is not about H-1B visas. If you read the article carefully you'll see this is about employment-based immigrant visas - i.e. green cards.

A green card is _not_ an employment based immigrant visa or even a visa at all - the H-1B is. A green card holder has permanent residency and can apply for largely any job a US citizen can. Further they are not required to leave the country on becoming unemployed.

The immigrant visa is usually a stepping stone to permanent residency via a green card though, and this lawsuit is absolutely related to that process - when applying for permanent residency (green card) on an H-1B, the employer must supposedly prove they couldn’t hire an American to do same job. This is usually called the “PERM process”.

There has always been a gray area as to what that standard means, I’ve seen different companies interpret it very differently. When we talk about employment based immigrant visas and Facebook, it is overwhelmingly the H-1B (the data on visas issued is public).

An H-1B is an employment-based non-immigrant visa; which is to say that it doesn't lead to a right to remain permanently in the U.S.

A green card (I-551) is indeed, not a visa, and I was speaking informally when I described it as such. It is a document that proves the holder is a permanent legal resident, which is an immigration status. The right to permanent legal residence is established through an immigrant visa, such as the EB visas for employment-based immigration.

If you are already in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, your employer will file an I-140 petition for (e.g.) an EB-1 visa. Once a visa is available (this is the long wait for Indian/Chinese applicants in many categories), you can then file a I-485 application for adjustment of status on the basis of the approved I-140 petition. Assuming the I-485 application is approved, then you will receive the I-551 "green card" as proof.

In short: yes, the story is exactly about employment-based immigrant visas.

It’s almost entirely about PERM interviews conducted by Facebook for their H-1B holders looking to adjust status, yes. My main issue is with your earlier statement that this has nothing to do with the H-1B, when it almost exclusively concerns H-1B visa holders at Facebook in practice.

It would equivalently apply to petitions for immigrant visas where applicants would be outside the U.S. and apply via consular processing. Or for employees on intracompany transferee L-1 visas.

The PERM process is specifically a prerequisite to an I-140 petition for immigrant visa. Anything assertion that Facebook was "defrauding the H-1B program" is completely spurious.

While you are of course entitled to your view, I would respectfully disagree. In practice the _vast_ majority of I-140s filed by Facebook are for their H-1B holders. To pretend their PERM recruitment process and their use of the H-1B is somehow totally unlinked is disingenuous at best.

They should revoke the right of any employer who egregiously violates the program like this. Then have them build programs to get under served communities (urban and rural) to get up to speed; grade them on effectiveness and fine them if ineffective.

Well, you're assuming that they actually want the law enforced in this case and aren't just lightly slapping wrists for appearance's sake.

I'd imagine that the change of guard in the White House might have had something to do with it as well. Each administration had drastically different views on immigration policy.

I agree with this. Facebook made money hiring non-American workers and now they are being fined (I would highly doubt the money made/saved by hiring immigrant workers was invested to offset any "costs"). So, the money they didn't spend/invest on American on workers goes to the US government and not a penny goes towards actually fixing the situation (educating motivated Americans to be good enough to do said jobs for $X). If educating and hiring Americans to work for American companies was a financial gain they would have done it but instead hiring Americans that had to be educated/trained is seen as a financial liability (What if they don't work out? What if they leave for another company? Etc.). However, in the case of an immigrant the simple fact they can't just switch jobs, you'll make due with $X a month and they have to make things work or it's back to wherever you are from while at the same time they are 100% over qualified is one heck of a financial leverage that any company would take. That's just the simple facts when you have loads of money you want more of it and to make that happen you'll do things like this that ensure more of it flows your way.

facebook didnt make money hiring non-american workers. Non-America workers control hiring at facebook conducting almost all technical interviews and engineering management positions. H1b non-Americans which have profited from the immigration system have a conflict of interest in that they do not want to hire Americans because almost all Americans do not support h1b or immigration. DOJ has a list of all US citizens who applied for jobs at facebook which numbers in the thousands. The idea that Americans are uneducated and unqualified is foreign and leftist propaganda. Leverage over h1bs by the company is correct, but is not what this is about.

FAANGs are always hiring. Any US citizen, who's qualified, can get a job there at any point in time.

"who's qualified"

I suspect the qualifications are different depending on your citizenship.

I've been recruited by different FAANGs, and was also actively recruiting people at them. Your suspicions are wrong.

Bar is the same (of course, there will some bias from specific people, but those are one-offs). Even more - hiring H1Bs is harder than hiring a citizen and it's more costly to the company (immigration sucks). If they could, they wouldn't hire H1Bs.

Equation is different at sweatshops, where you don't hire specific people, that meet specific bars you have. They have no bars - they just need code/ops/qa monkeys. They apply for as many visas as you can, and get whoever they can get as a result. As long as they got enough people, they're happy.

You are over simplifying a bit. Yes it may cost more to hire a H1B due to legal costs but only a small amount more at companies of this size. They have teams of people who handle that.

H1B workers are often paid less that citizens. In the long run it is probably cheaper to hire H1B workers even after the legal costs.

> H1B workers are often paid less that citizens

At sweatshops. Not at FAANGs.

It is more fair at fang but that isnt 100% true. I see a lot of fang offers and they are often lower.

The majority of H-1B employees at FAANG come on L-1 visas first. There’s no direct comparison because they join the company in a different country and a different market. The bar is not the same as the number of open positions in one market vs the other is not the same.

Why would this be? Citizens and residents get the same pay and benefits. If anything, employing a noncitizen is more work because you have to manage the whole immigration process.

What's in it for the company?

Not really, if they aren’t attracting domestic talent when they post a job at $xyz but would have if they would pay $qrs, but instead of increasing their offers they go find an H1b that will take $xyz then it’s suppressing wages and cheaper for the company in the long run

It would also be illegal.

Should actual private person defraud on this scale it is jail time. But of course directors of big corporations are "more equal" than the rest. And the amount of fine is laughable.

That would be more punitive to prospective employees and students than to Facebook itself.

I love that suggestion, it would be impactful and resonate more with other employers than some arbitrary financial figure

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