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esalman

Here are the rough requirements for said newspaper ad according to DOL:

• The job must be advertised in the print edition of two different Sunday newspapers.

• The newspaper must be widely distributed in the area where the job is located.

• Both ads must run between 30 and 180 days before you file the PERM application.

• The advertisement must clearly state the name of the employer.

• The ad must outline the job duties, requirements, and the work location.

• Listing the wage is optional, but if included, it cannot be below the official prevailing wage.

• Employers must keep the full-page newspaper tearsheets for 5 years in case of an audit.

It doesn't say anywhere that it cannot be advertised in a small town.

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> Listing the wage is optional, but if included, it cannot be below the official prevailing wage.

What an absurd carve out seemingly designed to facilitate exactly the sort of fraud being alleged. If you want to argue that you couldn't find qualified local workers one of the basic prerequisites ought to be documenting what the prevailing wage is and openly advertising the position at some small percentage _above_ that rate in order to attract local talent. In all cases the accuracy of that value should absolutely be audited by the government before granting the application.

"We couldn't find any qualified local applicants willing to accept substandard pay and we don't feel up to competing properly" is absolutely not the stated purpose of the program yet the rules apparently cater to that. A complete farce on the part of the federal government.

>It doesn't say anywhere that it cannot be advertised in a small town.

It does say in the law [1]: "there are not sufficient workers who are able, willing, qualified (or equally qualified in the case of an alien described in clause (ii)) and available at the time of application for a visa and admission to the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform such skilled or unskilled labor".

The rules of DOL are just guidelines how they are going to determine this but they are not the law. I will argue that if you are planning to publish your job ads in a small town newspaper you do not believe yourself that there are no "able, willing, qualified and available" Americans for your job.

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182

>I will argue

You, or the government in this case, should argue that in a court of law. So far, the government has not won any of these cases in a court of law. And I mean over the last 2-3 decades. The number of successful prosecutions will be in single digits. It's a bit like voter fraud when it comes to actual numbers.

Which cases? What prosecutions? Are you seriously saying that there are no qualified, willing and available workers for random PM or front end jobs and only this particular Indian person, who just graduated from an American college a few years ago is the only one who is able to do the job? I'd love to see a single case like this, got any links?

The cases where the government has proved in a court of law that a company is in violation of the statute or regulation. I am not aware of any successful prosecutions here other than maybe Cognizant which was in the news some time ago.

What prosecutions of the 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(5)(A)(i) do you mean? It's a clause that says that aliens looking for a job are inadmissible unless there are no qualified, willing and available workers as certified by DOL. It is not prosecuted, aliens are just not admitted. But if you have seen it being prosecuted somehow I am still waiting for a link.

PERM is approved at a rate in high 90s. The government - this government - has approved PERM for all these corporations that it is slandering now. Here's a deposition from a DOL employee [1]:

"Q Are any PERMs denied for fraud? A Not to my knowledge."

There is a PERM process, the government overwhelmingly approves it, it does not take anything to court or win. I am not sure what you are trying to argue.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.266...

You are not giving the links to the prosecutions you claimed the government lost.

I am claiming the government does not prosecute them or deny their PERM. What are you arguing? Can you state it clearly?

You claimed that government does not successfully prosecute this, implying it prosecutes and fails. If you wanted to say it does not prosecute then you should just said so when I asked what prosecution did you mean. Also what are you arguing here? We both agree that inadmissibility does not require prosecution, so what's your point again?

No, I never implied that they fail. They do not prosecute or deny any PERM certifications. PERM is anyway not tied to inadmissibility of an alien as PERM is an employer driven certification process. Recall that PERM is administered by the Dept. of Labor. Specifically for PERM, they need to prove in a court of law that the company is violating civil rights, labor laws, discriminating against a protected class, doing fraud, etc. They do not do that at the administrative level (by denying PERM) or at the judicial level (by winning a court case). All they do is make speeches on the campaign trail, and occasionally settle out of court as some other sibling comments' examples in Apple, META, etc. show.

Okay, then I read you reply wrong and have no idea what are you trying to say. The law I quoted is about inadmissibility, PERM is a process to create an exception for an inadmissible alien as described in the law. Recall that the exception is created via DOL certifying that there are no sufficient able, qualified, willing and available workers. PERM is a way to conduct this certification. Read my first message you have responded, it has the link to the law. I am also not sure what you mean by this "They do not do that at the administrative level (by denying PERM) " because the news item you are commenting under is exactly about the blanket PERM denial.

Yes, the present blanket ban is unlawful which will be overturned by the courts as arbitrary and capricious (similar to tariffs, 100k fee, and countless other things that this admin has done). I mean that historically PERM approval rates have been above 90%.

That's, like, your opinion, dude. For what it's worth, these bans are routine and had been issued many times before, none was declared "unlawful" by an actual court, nor it had been overturned. Usually what takes for the ban to be lifted is the company getting into compliance with the law and stopping the cute "nobody told us we should not ad in the Podunk Monthly Herald, we honestly thought this is the best place to source PMs!".

This is just textbook APA stuff. There is no such thing as a legal blanket ban. The executive does not have the authority to do any of this. And I will bet my money that MS has been following the law. Hopium and copium are free though, so I can't stop you from smoking it. The most likely outcome here is again a settlement after the midterms and some money thrown at Trump or Vance.

I believe you need to get a better textbook. The debarment program started in 2007 [1]

1. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/05/17/E7-9250...

And the APA passed in 1946. What you are pointing to is regulation. And Chevron was overturned recently. There is no jurisdiction review bar for PERM. I am willing to bet actual money that MS will win at trial or it will be settled out of court like everything else.

Again, I am not following, are you now saying that the debarment list for PERM does not exist or it's unlawful and will be overturned by courts any moment now, 19 years later? Well, as you said, nobody is going to debar you from smoking hopium and copium.

The present unilateral action of banning MS from using PERM is unlawful as MS hasn't broken any laws. (PERM has its own cooldown mechanism of timeouts after layoffs. I'm not talking about those.) If the US government bars MS on any grounds of fraud, abuse, misrepresentation, etc., or if the US government tries to claim that they have the power to unilaterally ban PERM for MS, they will lose in court or settle. We can revisit this in a few months.

Good, now you went from the "There is no such thing as a legal blanket ban. The executive does not have the authority to do any of this." to "MS will settle". It sure will, as all other targets of this action.

> "Q Are any PERMs denied for fraud? A Not to my knowledge."

This is misleading. "Fraud" is a legal term, and it's difficult to prove. However, DoL can and will do an audit to verify that the PERM application is correct. If the audit fails (and they fail them often) they just deny the petition.

But they don't deny them. PERM is approved > 90%. Google for PERM stats.

Well, yes. That's because the majority of PERMs are well-documented. It costs a lot to go through the process, so companies don't bother with weak applications.

I'm confused then. What are you trying to say? I am claiming that there is no meaningful fraud, misrepresentation, or abuse; everything is happening by the books with > 90% approval; things are working as designed and present theatre is political theatre for midterms.

No, I'm claiming that PERM is fraud-free because it happens so rarely. And DoL routinely audits and denies bad applications.

It's not a large percentage, but nowhere near the "never heard about DoL denying a petition" level.

They have settled at least one case: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

> Specifically, the department’s investigation found that Apple did not advertise positions Apple sought to fill through the PERM program on its external job website, even though its standard practice was to post other job positions on this website. It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions.

Of course court itself could have arrived in different result.

Yes, they all settle out of court. Everybody makes money and headlines. Companies write it off as the cost of doing business, politician uses it on the campaign trail. Biden sued SpaceX because they weren't hiring asylees. Same shtick.

Once the Govt really starts looking into it, the whole thing of dozens of layers of fraud will unravel. US Govt has multiple catch all laws to cover any kind of fraud.

1) The magical 10 year experience resume for a person straight out of college who has never worked a day in his life. Does not know what ssh is, what excel is or anything that any literate individual can figure out on their own.

2) The tens of thousands of consultancies marketing these people on OPT with 10 year experience. Fraudulent interviews, some other person will do proxy interviews.

3) The FTE employees creating dozens to hundreds of contractor positions under them. Interestingly, all of those will be filled by a specific contracting firm.

4) The contracting firm is a Women-Minority-Business owner, usually the wife or sister or sister-in-law of the FTE employee.

5) The FTE employee works assiduously get his relatives more FTEs, together they control a few hundred to a thousand contracting positions. The billing rates will be $100 - $120 to the contracting company, but they pay $40K - $50K for these people straight out of college, pocketing a huge margin.

6) Then, after 3 years, they will file H-1 with a pay of $50K - $60K in a very remote location, because the prevailing wage determination in that location will be $22 - $25/hour for a Computer Analyst.

7) The H4 visa fraud, FTEs spouse gets employed at the same company or a relative/buddys company. These spouses know absolutely nothing, but are hired at a very high wage.

8) The COVID PPP loans fraud.

9) Fraudulent 'employees' because these people have zero skills, they employ another person in a third world country.

Almost ALL of the US consulting is fraudulent. Most of the positions are completely unnecessary. Big companies are just as corrupt and blind as any other govt orgs. And this is happening in state govts too where they are hiring a lot of people in 'tech'. If the US Govt starts pulling the threads, issue subpeonas, they can extract tens to hundreds billions in fines for so many different kinds of fraud.

This is nothing new, has been going on since late 90s. These 'consulting' companies started with Y2K and since then grew exponentially. For a while, there wasn't enough supply of 'degree' holders, but now there are millions of degree holders with zero skills. That leads to other frauds:

1) The fraudulent degree certificates (lots of people can't even clear the 4 year degree in India) used to apply to US universities. 2) Students going to garbage universities and working in malls, doordash, etc. These degree mills and university<->consultancies nexus that guarantee I-20s is another thread.

“Must be widely distributed in the area the job is located” kinda limits the small towns that can be used. Not to mention the increasing difficulty of finding a small town with a newspaper.

FWIW this is rarely checked during PERM, e.g. in the DOJ statement posted in a sibling comment tree[1] they ran an investigation to find that Apple did not post their PERM jobs on their website. DOL happily approved those PERMS despite such an obvious conduct to limit the number of applicants for a job. And, when found, only Apple was slapped with a 25M settlement (which is profit Apple makes over couple of hours) - nobody in DOL who approved those PERMs had been punished.

1. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

The DOJ prevailing wage certifications are a joke. The same people who say advertising a web developer job in the sunday paper is sufficient notice also say if what you’re paying for that web developer is market rate.

Some of these requirements are so ridiculous that they create the need for everyone to do what Vance is accusing Microsoft of.

Many companies fulfill the intent of the law. They run a real hiring process — where they advertise online and interview people with work authorization/citizens and people who would require sponsorship.

But if someone requiring sponsorship was the best candidate for the job, then they have to run an additional “fake” process that fulfills these requirements, since no one actually hires tech workers from the newspaper.

> requirements are so ridiculous that they create the need

It's the other way around. The "need" creates the ridiculous requirements. Companies get the laws they want and the laws they want are those that give them an excuse to do what they want to do.

Considering how many of these adds have more than a hundred of local applicants, and still end up hiring people that are not from North America it is quite clear they do not intend to follow the intent of the law.

Let's be honest they want a captive workforce that depends upon them to stay in the USA and build a life.

There has to be a better way to does not make them captive, and allows Americans to be the first ones, and even after that the priority should be people in North America, even International students.

But the fact they keep hiring mostly and overwhelmingly people from the same five countries that are desperate to come to the USA is an indication these companies are profiting formt he desperation of people.

> Considering how many of these adds have more than a hundred of local applicants, and still end up hiring people that are not from North America it is quite clear they do not intend to follow the intent of the law.

You’re assuming without evidence that for any given job, that there will be qualified Americans willing to perform that job who aren’t already happily employed. You haven’t established that.

Hell, ask restaurateurs. They frequently have difficult hiring qualified local labor, too, even though the bar isn’t nearly as high as for a technologist, in major cities.

> You’re assuming without evidence that for any given job, that there will be qualified Americans willing to perform that job who aren’t already happily employed.

You can offer them more money, better work/life balance, a more fulfilling job, etc. When the government allows the hiring of foreign workers on visas, it's tilting the playing field in favor of employers. Why offer a better wage when you can just cry to the government and get an indentured servant at a discount?

Exceptional talent is a different argument - most H1bs are average at best. Claiming to be unable to hire for an entry or mid-level software engineer job is absurd.

> You can offer them more money, better work/life balance, a more fulfilling job, etc.

If the qualified workers are already fully employed, how will this result in more of them in the short term?

> Why offer a better wage when you can just cry to the government and get an indentured servant at a discount?

The law requires H1B workers be paid the prevailing wage (20 CFR 655.731), and studies indicate that they're paid pretty close to the average wage (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34793/w347...) -- well within the statistical band. If we keep in mind that half of all citizens holding a particular job are paid below the average wage, too, then perhaps the hue and cry over pay is overblown.

If employers can't pay the market wage, they can't afford a worker. This is what drives productivity gains for the economy. Inefficient business models die off and are replaced by businesses that can use labor more effectively.

I don't see how this squares with my comment that these workers are being paid within the market wage band.

Don't you see the clear contradiction between the claim that the employer is paying the market wage, and the fact that they can't hire an American worker at that price? Clearly the claimed "market wage band" is wrong if they can't actually hire a qualified American employee at that price.

Note that there are also plenty of other factors besides wage, eg. 24/7 on-call, working in a remote location, mandatory overtime, etc. Even if an employer actually is paying the market wage for the general job category, there is likely a reason why American candidates are not interested.

You're arguing in poor faith. Microsoft has laid off thousands of workers this year alone. As has nearly every large tech company.

There's no shortage of qualified US tech workers. Microsoft and many other tech companies (cough Accenture cough) abuse this system. They want workers who cannot easily get jobs with another company due to the visa system and will take the lowest of wages.

> Microsoft has laid off thousands of workers this year alone.

If I lay off experienced buggy whip makers because the market for horse-drawn buggies is shrinking, and I need to hire experienced aluminum workers instead to meet my customers' demands, it doesn't necessarily mean I can hire the buggy whip makers back for that job. Labor is not necessarily substitutable like that. Not even software developers.

It's also worth noting that companies often use layoffs as a way to efficiently trim the worst-performing labor cohort. They don't do it because they want to hire cheaper labor; it's because they want to let these workers go without the overhead of going through the formal termination process for each one individually.

> There's no shortage of qualified US tech workers.

This statement is so broad it's difficult to evaluate. There might be plenty of US tech workers, and there might be a surplus of US tech workers qualified for some job, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are qualified for the specific job openings.

Speaking from my own experience, my team is hiring several senior SREs, and we're not seeing a flood of qualified candidates. We get a flood of resumes, but the signal to noise ratio is low. The candidates' CVs claim the requisite qualifications, but when we actually evaluate the candidates for role fit, we are finding that their actual skills aren't those we need for success in these roles.

>> hiring several senior SREs

staff SRE here, got a link? :)

You'll have to look at the bulletin board in some town with a population of 75.

Humans tend not to be fungible.

This is not a management perspective.

Not all managers think alike, you know. Small businesses in particular (which employ most people) tend not to treat their workers that way.

We're discussing this in the context of Microsoft and other organizations large enough to employ double digit percentages of all H1B visa immigrants to the USA.

The quirks of individual managers don't matter in this context.

Is that really the intent of the law? From here it looks like the intent is to favor citizens to people who would require sponsorship, but a hiring process that selects the best candidate from a single set of citizen and foreign candidates doesn't do that.

> But if someone requiring sponsorship was the best candidate for the job, then they have to run an additional “fake” process that fulfills these requirements.

Without running a process how do you know someone requiring sponsorship is, and a correction to language, an adequate candidate for the job.

It also doesn't say that the paper needs to be widely read, just circulated, right? I mean, why pay for a job ad in the SF Chronicle when you can put a cheap ad in the (now defunct?) SF Weekly free paper? When it was still around, SF Weekly would have met the threshold for being widely distributed...

Why pay to reach many thousands of people with a widely read paper when you can pay pennies to reach dozens of people that you don't want to apply to the job anyway?

This is an entire business model.

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

That is one of my fave quotes from that book, and I use it often in situations just like this one. It's a shame they didn't include it at all in the movie!

> This is an entire business model.

was this how those 'free newspapers' back around 2005~2010 worked?

Yeah. The trade rags from companies like Ziff Davis had a section of plain classified ads that were like 2-4 pages of 6 point black and white text.

This is precisely what Metro Silicon Valley (Formerly San Jose Metro) is doing. If you look in the back you see many the ads that are being talked about. The same ads are not listed online.

Gather those ads, index them. Offer them as a subscription. Profit..?

> The newspaper must be widely distributed in the area where the job is located.

Based on that I would expect that if you advertise in small town newspaper, the job needs to be located in that small town. Want them to work in your big office next to big city, then it must be a newspaper widely distributed in that city not a small town on the opposite side of continent.

I wonder if wfh creates any loopholes here, and they just select areas where there are no real candidate pools.

I've seen these ads. Not the latest, some things might have changed, but circa 2015-2018, this is how they rolled:

1. You choose newspapers that are least likely to actually reach people looking for tech jobs.

2. You post an small ad specifying the role in the most vague and unappealing terms.

3. There is some weird and inconvenient way to apply (e.g., fax- or snail-mail-only) that goes to /dev/null.

You can argue that it follows the letter of the law, but as a practical matter, the outcome is always that there are no US-based applicants for any H-1B SWE role, so something is wonky, right?

Didn’t people start publishing lists of these and people started applying and these HR departments lost their minds?

Anyone know the list ? Curious to check it out

https://www.jobs.now/jobs/746649922-android-developer

Here's one for Android Developer.

Must apply by snail mail.

If only they made a device (with an OS perhaps) where one could apply to such things electronically.

Just...wow.

I'm not American and I don't live in the US, and I pretty hate Trump and his allies but this ad is just...wow. I think this is a loophole that should be closed.

Do note there are similar practices in many (all?) countries. Recently there was one case in Finland where job posting was extremely specific saying "We require, and by that we mean require, not recommend, experience in Leader and EU funding as well at least 14 years and 5 months of relevant experience". Their CEO admitted publicly that it was just done due to them being to public funding and that requires job postings to published. One of the articles (in Finnish): https://www.hs.fi/alueet/art-2000012282918.html

I recently saw the job posting in Finland (Suunto, I believe) that had diving experience as an imperative requirement for an embedded software engineer role. I've applied and never heard back. HR contact that they posted also never replied. The job was closed a couple weeks after. I never even got a rejection email.

So yeah, everyone do that, that's kind of the de facto way of hiring specific people when there is a requirement to post jobs. That doesn't make it ok though.

That’s a frustration. People project their hopes and dreams onto Donald Trump, but the president isn’t t a king. The same neoliberal order remains, another war crushing global trade, but still no action taken. Donald Trump did make a lot of crypto money though.

Yes, jobs.now

Yup someone started to aggregate those. Corp lawyers probably laughed at their cuteness and then proceeded to obscure the process even more. Say, only publish in newspapers without an online presence, so someone has to physically scan it. Or find a small town where few people in tech live. Also notify the HR department to ensure to flag out all US applications for some other "unrelated reason" that look plausible on paper.

What's the point of bringing in workers into US just to have them work remotely from home? At that point why not have them work remotely from other side of ocean.

Cultural and timezone alignment. We’ve been here before with the outsourcing wave 20 years ago. The answers are still the same, remote is just a job perk.

Before Covid-19, when you asked tech folks about outsourcing to central American countries (or even within the US to places with lower wages than the bay area), the answer would always be "nothing can replace in-person meetings around a real whiteboard"

I'm sure they'd still prefer that. However, a team on another continent can become a black box organizationally in a way even a remote individual probably can't. Or at least the size of the effect is much less.

Taxes probably. And you can bring them in if necessary occasionally.

It's a lot less accounting work to have most of your workers in the same state. Imagine single workers or small groups in many different countries.

Saving half in salaries might make up for some additional payroll complexity.

It takes a lot of trust (on both sides) and complexity to establish a working relationship across two jurisdictions, if at all possible.

For instance, what labor laws apply? And who enforces them? And how, given parties in two different countries?

Does the company want to subject itself to some arbitrary country’s tax man or labor law enforcer prosecutions? Does the employee want to work under effectively zero labor protection? Possibly, but rarely.

It’s not even always possible, it’s very complicated to work remotely in France, for instance. The state cracks down on one person one client companies, and EoRs beyond being impractical (as they must adhere to drastic labor laws compared to the US) are in a legal gray zone.

>For instance, what labor laws apply?

The laws of the worker's locality is generally how it works. In the film industry, a production company based in LA might do a shoot in NYC- they have to follow NYC's labor laws since that's where the workers are and the work is being done.

The workers at the home base in LA have the LA laws applied to them.

>And who enforces them?

The local government.

Exactly, and those answers are why it’s a hurdle and a leap of faith.

The company has to adhere to labor laws in foreign countries (most likely plural if this is a general policy). That’s quite the overhead and opens you up to legal trouble.

The employee has to trust their government can prosecute or otherwise coerce a foreign company with no entity on their territory (otherwise they’d just get hired normally through the subsidiary).

LA and NJ remain two states of a common country and I'm sure that simplifies a lot of things.

Although none of this applies if the company is a multinational with offices in the employee’s country. But then that is offshoring rather than remote work.

If they work remotely from the other side of the ocean then they are free to leave and find another job easily without risking their green card

If you bring them to America you've basically created a worker who is dependent on staying employed with you in order to keep their place

I'm not sure there is any advantage in publishing this in a remote town rather than NYC and SF.

Any tech savvy person in NYC or SF would not be scouring newspapers for tech jobs and even if they are, they are most likely to be H1B or Greencard themselves.

A small town newspaper may actually make people apply to those roles.

But either way, people who likely to come through these ads can be easily disqualified just by adding a few technology stacks

For many companies the whole reason for this is to pay lower salary and prevailing wage in NYC and SF is higher. I knew a guy who got a small raise before his PERM was filled simply because his salary at the time was lower than salary in PERM. It was 10 years ago and in Florida, I imagine difference now and in HCOL locations is even bigger.

Are you trying to justify the exploitation of this loophole?

Nearly all these ads say "Send CVs to immigration_department@tech.corp" they aren't even trying to conceal what they're doing.

Those are some seriously out of touch requirements that could easily be fixed if anyone in power actually wanted to.

Yeah, I believe these are the requirements for PERM: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-20/chapter-V/part-656/sub...

They are wildly out of date compared to how jobs are actually filled. Regardless of any other enforcement actions, this needs to be fixed.

I don't think it even needs congressional approval to change these. The DoL could do it.

Just copying the actual newspaper part here:

(B) Advertisements in newspaper or professional journals.

(1) Placing an advertisement on two different Sundays in the newspaper of general circulation in the area of intended employment most appropriate to the occupation and the workers likely to apply for the job opportunity and most likely to bring responses from able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers.

(2) If the job opportunity is located in a rural area of intended employment that does not have a newspaper with a Sunday edition, the employer may use the edition with the widest circulation in the area of intended employment.

(3) The advertisements must satisfy the requirements of paragraph (f) of this section. Documentation of this step can be satisfied by furnishing copies of the newspaper pages in which the advertisements appeared or proof of publication furnished by the newspaper.

(4) If the job involved in the application requires experience and an advanced degree, and a professional journal normally would be used to advertise the job opportunity, the employer may, in lieu of one of the Sunday advertisements, place an advertisement in the professional journal most likely to bring responses from able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers. Documentation of this step can be satisfied by providing a copy of the page in which the advertisement appeared.

I'm more speaking to the point that the options are "newspaper or professional journals" in the-year-of-our-lord 2026. Job sites are under a section that gives a pool of other options of which the employer must pick three. Those requirements should be flipped (job sites are the requirement, newspaper and journals are one of the extra options) if the DoL wasn't asleep at the wheel.

Edit: And thats not a R vs D thing. The requirements have been this way under multiple administrations, and newspapers have not been a primary way of sourcing candidates for two decades.

Oh I completely get the point that it's an out of date practice. However, it is the current rule. You can't say that it's only these specific companies that do that. Every company that files for employment-based green cards does this. Yes, if the government wants to change that then they should change the actual rules, not just try to guilt companies into doing something different.

Not an American, but why Sundays? I'd assume job seekers wouldn't care as much on Sundays

Going back in time it's likely because the Sunday paper was traditionally the largest edition of the week. It would normally have a lot more sections to it. You'd have special features like the Sunday comics and they would be in color, not black & white like the rest of the week. The paper would usually be a bit more expensive as well ie. $2 instead of $1. I'm guessing it likely reached a larger audience.

lol, I feel old now talking about this :)

This made me look up when the rules about posting in the newspaper went into effect. I was surprised to find that it was 2005. This is much later than I thought. I would have guessed the 90s. By 2005, it was clear that the newspaper industry was dying due to the internet. I guess this is one example of how out of touch government can be.

Someone else mentioned in the thread elsewhere about whether the rules would need Congressional approval. Gemini says that these are purely an agency regulation and the Department of Labor can update them at anytime. It's kind of mind-boggling that no administration has updated them in 20+ years.

They are not "Out of date".

Like many things in US law, they have been deliberately ignored as time moves past them to ensure the laws no longer constrain them.

Most governments actually have no difficulty doing "Keeping the lights on" work like updating laws to reflect the times changing. Even here in the US, Republican state governments will have no difficulty keeping the lights on and running day to day tasks, and it usually moves at a reasonable clip.

Another good example of this is any time something comes up that a government body is very very for, it takes almost no time to actually get done. In principle, the turnaround time for a government to react to something can be a single day if necessary. Or less.

But the US Federal congress, explicitly Republicans, has purposely and explicitly and publicly made it a part of their platform to prevent the government from doing anything, including day to day tasks. The modern federal congress does so much less than it used to. On purpose.

Somehow the things that were trivial to do back with ink and quill are suddenly impossible to do in a timely manner. Because it's entirely by choice. Democrats aren't innocent, and are perfectly willing to not do their job when they can get away with it.

As far as I can tell this doesn't need congressional approval as the guidelines are not set by statute. The DoL could change these rules tomorrow.

How to "fix" it depends a lot on exactly what your goals are.

Waa! Is that why I'm still unemployed, because I haven't been buying (or reading) newspapers...

I’m sure they’d find a reason to pass on anyone that does apply through those ads.

But then it is legally hazardous for them to hire the foreigner

That assumes anyone is actually checking up on this. Enforcement is virtually nonexistent.

Except the point of the original post is that has changed.

That's a systems question. We've had comments on HN before from people who post those ads because they're legally required to do so. The comment that I recall said (in my paraphrase):

- If you apply, you will not be hired, because we're only looking to hire the guy we already have in mind, who we're already working with under some other relationship.

- But, if you apply, that guy also won't be hired, because we proved to be able to fill the role locally.

- This annoys us and him and you.

From a systems perspective (and taking this description as accurate), if people make it their business to apply to those ads, it really will stop companies from using this method to get green cards for foreigners they'd like to employ. The downstream effects are open to question; maybe a given company will employ more domestic employees and maybe it will just keep using the same foreign contractors it's already using.

I heard that this rule is genuinely keeping the lights on for some local print media publications.

Socialism with extra steps.

Not that socialism is inherently bad, but why not just be honest about it and implement it more directly?

Who am I kidding, socialism is the bogeyman doing hero's duty sustaining unrestricted ultracapitalism.

"The newspaper must be widely distributed in the area where the job is located." Which of these mega-crops are located in a small town?

Do people still look for jobs in newspapers? I don't think my city (non-American) even has a local newspaper anyore.

I would hazard a guess that Microsoft follows this process exactly, and this probably won't hold up in court. But it looks like good midterm fodder!

> • The newspaper must be widely distributed in the area where the job is located.

> It doesn't say anywhere that it cannot be advertised in a small town.

What does 'widely distributed' mean if not "not just in a small town"?

It could be the Redmond paper in this case. That maybe has a few hundred readers.

The rule is pretty dumb in a country where people regularly move far for a job.

And where sites like LinkedIn exist.

> The job must be advertised in the print edition of two different Sunday newspapers.

Advertising in the Sunday newspaper seems a bit antiquated. I don't think I've looked in a newspaper for a job since the 90s.

That's how I have been getting my last 6 jobs.

I never get a reply via indeed and the rest online.

Please use more than one brain cell in order to consider the intent behind those guidelines, and whether what Microsoft (and similar companies) is doing is actually within the bounds of what voters and the representatives who wrote the relevant laws wanted. Do you really think the purpose of making companies advertise the job opening in a newspaper was just to give companies a bunch of busywork? or might there have actually been an intent behind it? Are you capable of ascertaining what that intent is? (note: this question has a right answer that all people arguing in good faith are capable of stating)

> It doesn't say anywhere that it cannot be advertised in a small town.

I think it is implies in: "The newspaper must be widely distributed in the area where the job is located."

But if the job is located in Redmond, does that mean widely distributed in Redmond itself, or the Eastside, or all King County, or the whole Puget Sound area?

That's usually what a judge decides.

Anyway, I went checking and I wasn't able to find any opening in Microsoft in the Seattle times online version. Which is definitely not a nice optics and would play unfortunately well with the current allegations

I got a PERM at MSFT once - they publish the PERM ads with a lower salary than the regular ads for openings at the same level (IIRC the minimum needed by the DoL for certification), so you'd have to be a bit mad to apply for them. But I also bet they pick the most obscure local newspapers...

The point of a green card is "Nobody in the US was able to do this job"

In that context, "Widely distributed" really shouldn't be such a complicated concept. What does the NYT charge to run a classified ad?

"Nobody in redmond could do this job!". Cool, did you try any of the other 49 states at all? No? Then go away.

The concept is quite flawed for tech companies that hire everyone who passes their technical bar. There's not a finite number of positions that Americans and foreigners are competing for. There are many jobs where a) an American could do it if they want but b) no American feels like it or c) any American who does feel like it could easily get hired without needing the bureaucracy imposed on PERM applicants.

When the job is wfh, the entire globe is where the job is located. Are there any physical rags that are widely distributed globally?

Maybe it's time to rewrite the aged and archaic laws, instead of selectively applying them to a handful of companies...

If the job is WFH, is green card applicable?

Why wouldn't it be?

Because you could... Work from home? In Canada or India?

Is that supposed to be a downside? I honestly don't see why that would matter. If someone is working for a US company, then they're working for a US company. The flag sticking out of the ground where they sit shouldn't be relevant.

Yes it is, because America has a vested interest in writing laws to benefit, I don't know, AMERICANS.

American companies are for Americans.

Why would they need a greencard?

So they can visit for the team building exercises and holiday parties, obviously

Are all the position in Microsoft WFH?

I have several friends who works in Microsoft and would disagree

> The job must be advertised in the print edition of two different Sunday newspapers

Ah yes, the newspaper, the bastion of where all millennial and Gen Z software engineers deign to get their news from in 2026…

But why must it be on print? I mean ... does that make objectively sense? I don't even read paper news anymore.

> Both ads must run between 30 and 180 days

what can be a reason for an upper limit?

Sounds like a good time to start responding to newspaper job ads

Yeah, the rules are designed to facilitate fraud. They let you put job ads for web developers in a newspaper instead of, you know, on the Internet.

If the rules weren’t designed from the outset to facilitate fraud, they would have required the company to advertise the position in the same places they advertise their other jobs.

> If the rules weren’t designed from the outset to facilitate fraud

I wouldn't default to assuming malice. These laws were written by extremely old people who are still living in the 1950s, where they think the paper boy still rides up on his bicycle on Sunday to deliver the news paper to them, and that's the only way to read about jobs.

These are Department of Labor regulations that are updated with some frequency.

Imagine if they changed the law to reflect what they wanted instead of randomly punishing companies that most likely are doing the same thing everyone else is, but they angered the admin by telling them "no" on some topic.

Newspaper!?

Yes, these are literally the guidelines provided by the DOL. And the government seems to want to punish companies for following the exact published guidelines.

Oh come on, if a company is placing job ads to comply with the letter of this law in 2026 they're 100% exploiting the process Vance outlines and would undoubtedly try to exploit whatever the replacement process was as well.

Where "100% exploiting the process" means complying 100% with the standards.

Ethereum has “code is law”, but we can still have a notion of the code being exploited, because it is the intent that’s been exploited

Following the published guidelines is not exploiting them. If the government doesn’t like their own guidelines, they should change them.

Agreed, if a company wants to fill roles it advertises on linked in. Maybe the rules need updating.

Nothing prevents the administration from changing the law then, last time I checked their party holds all three branches of government + SCOTUS.

Are we referring to the same administration that is met with immediate resistance from an activist judiciary whenever it tries to do literally anything?

Maybe they should stop trying to do illegal things.

Is this thing they're doing illegal?

No, just selective enforcement and maybe sending a message that if you don't behave, the administration may look a bit harder into you than it normally would.

What is the evidence of selective enforcement?

I don't have evidence, I am operating under the assumption that e.g. folks behind jobs.now [1] did their homework. This is also what the OP of this whole thread claimed. [2]

[1] https://www.jobs.now/blog/unveiling-the-truth-about-h-1b-vis... "The Jobs.Now team has reviewed job postings from dozens of top companies like Meta, Block, Doordash, and Netflix which require unusual application processes like emailing or paper-mailing the application to specialized addresses, or using unbranded separate websites for collecting applications for jobs." + search for occurrence of "Apple" [2] "My understanding is that this is pretty much how everyone does it, no?"

Why would you give this administration the benefit of doubt?

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article317504545.html

Passing a constitutionally valid law through congress and then having the executive branch enforce it would not meet any judicial resistance.

I suspect the courts would welcome it.

No, it is meeting resistance from judges that follow the law. It is also meeting support from judges who dont care, including majority of supreme court.

Correction: SCOTUS is not owned by any political party. Activists can claim whatever they want about the voting record of the justices, but SCOTUS is above petty politics.

The purpose of the system is what it does. At the very least 2 votes on the bench are default admin votes. It's not the activists who are claiming things. You can look up overall SCOTUS approval trendlines.

The laws were written carefully with the full support of industry lobbyists for maximal benefit. These are not accidents.

Not really. Meta had to change advertising to allow online applications.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-labor-depart...

Just vote bank politics. Microsoft is not a cheap sweatshop. If it is a sweatshop and still producing what it produces then that defies logic. We can only expect more of these as mid terms approaches.

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