Comment by lgleason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lgleason | Hacker News Reader

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There is no requirement to demonstrate that you cannot find an American to do the job to get an H1b visa approved. If that person applies for a PERM position (needed to convert to a green card) there is. Hence the H1b is easy to game by employers to get cheap indentured servants.

With PERM (converting to a green card) they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved. Some of the tricks include putting ads in the newspaper, using esoteric websites and other media such as radio instead of job boards where tech people actually look for jobs. Some Americans who have trouble finding jobs in the current market took on a side project of scraping newspaper ads and these job boards and created https://www.jobs.now/ which lists these jobs. If enough Americans that meet the minimum qualifications apply for a listed job it stops the green card process for that position, usually for 6 months before the sponsor may try again.

Also, there are a lot of stories about people getting O-1 visas via fake credential mills and research papers. Both can and are being gamed to get O-1's.

Thanks for the jobs.now!

I still think that you mix up the "green card" and the "H1B visa".

The green card is a status of a permanent resident. A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it. It costs significant money so an employer usually helps with that.

The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US. That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.

I updated my comment to clarify what I meant by PERM, which is a green card application.

"The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US."

The H1B visa application has no requirement to try to recruit US workers which makes it easier to game the system to pay the lowest wage possible.

so, you believe that the H1B worker shouldn't get a greencard?

If there are qualified American workers who are looking for work and applying for these positions then no, they should not. Legally they cannot either. Now on the flip side, if there is an actual shortage of qualified workers then sure. But right now, there is no shortage of qualified workers in most of these slots, especially if companies are willing to pay a competitive wage.

I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, that it'd take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a greencard (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)

If there is an American than can do the job then absolutely not the worker should NOT get a green card

I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, it'll take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a green card (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)

That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.

Practically true - but that it’s not permitted to count experience gained while working on an H-1B when applying for a green card.

If an application for a green card is made for a person who’s currently in the USA on a H-1B visa, the person needs to qualify for it based on their qualifications and experience prior to whatever they’ve done in their current H-1B job.

No, he is right. Despite common sense, the labor test (seeing if an American can do the job the visa holder is currently doing) is applied at green card application time, not at H1B visa time.

> A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it.

There is no "5 year" requirement to get a green card. A company can even sponsor an employee from abroad (e.g. a satellite office) to get a green card and if approved they will be a permanent resident the moment they arrive in the USA.

Perhaps you are thinking of the five years of a green card needed to apply for citizenship?

The employee isn’t allowed to pay for it. It has to be paid for by the employer (except premium processing and visa stamping fees (2-3k)).

they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved.

And this explains why I recently heard an ad on KNX radio for a tech job at a winery or brewery or something similar, which specified that applications would only be taken by mail.

It also had a massive list of responsibilities and a pay rate about half of what it should be.

You can report that to the Department of Labor. They are supposed to take applications in the same way they usually do. If they accept online applications for other positions they should be taking them for PERM recruiting too.

I scraped through PERM before the recruiting phase started getting attention from websites like jobs.now. I'm not against this and would expand the test to non-immigrant visas.

Meta being sued by the DoL was supposed to stop ridiculous gaming of the process [0].

Still I think a points system would be better for America and the RAISE Act is looking better everyday [1].

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/19/facebook-settles-claims-it-d...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act

A lot of these jobs are from places like Stripe or Big-4 accounting.

Are they hiding jobs?

They are making these specific jobs tough to find because they are for a PERM test and don't want to get applicants. This video is old, but the same thing is happening today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

I live in a remote, low education, low income, low population area and they frequently take out classified ads specifically here.

I haven't bothered to ever apply because to me it seemed obvious what is going on.

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