Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

Can you expand how exactly this particular problem (advertising jobs for PERM to comply with the law yet making sure that no applications will be received) can be fixed with a different order of issuing H-1B visas?

PERM has nothing to do with H-1B, it's a part of the employment-based immigration process. The reason companies do this shit is because they claim to the US that there are no willing and able citizens or permanent residents for a commodity job such as "front end" or "project management". I.e. committing fraud.

The lure of H-1B is not really the money savings. Go look at the graduating class of computer science students at large universities. A large fraction are international students. Universities thrive on them since they pay the most tuition and are generally not allowed any financial aid. Companies want to hire them in addition to U.S. citizens. That's it. No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis.

The difficulty of switching jobs on H1-B has always been a myth. Voluntary job switches are just as easy as U.S. citizens. You just line up things well without the possibility of taking a long break in between jobs. Dealing with unexpected job terminations (fired or laid off) is the problem.

> Your country sold you down the river 30 years ago.

Jm2c but I think the harsh truth is that US while having a decently sized population of good software engineers, it is still nowhere near the required amount.

Thus, many companies would rather give 150/200k to someone who's actually good at it and will be impressed by that money rather than some half assed US graduate who only went into SE because he wanted a cushy well paying job.

For those curious, a common method is to publish the job listing in the newspaper classifieds.

This is what my old employer did to sponsor the visa for the company’s CTO.

Newspapers are used for a surprising number of various public announcements. E.g. in New York you must publish a notice in a newspaper for 6 weeks (or something like that) when establishing a LLC.

There’s something to be said for reading the paper even in 2025! Although I suppose the notices are probably also online..

The thing this article didn't mention and the author likely doesn't know is that there's a guide going around instructing people on how to apply for H1B jobs on forums like 4chan.

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I've noticed this as well, but see it mostly as "A players hire other A players, B players hire C players". The top tier of Indian execs/management that I've met will hire diverse teams, just like the top tier of every other ethnicity will as well. There's simply not enough people at the top to put a racial/ethnic/caste filter on it. But then once you get down to the second tier, people will happily hire people like themselves, because at that level you're hiring on vibes rather than data and similar people give you fuzzy comfortable vibes.

Unfortunately most Fortune 500 companies are in the hands of B players now, and it goes all the way up, with the government (multiple governments, really) being in the hands of B/C players. The A players are happily retired and pulling strings in the background with their 501(c)4s.

> It's extremely racist

I'm not sure if the motive behind such behavior is racism. Instead, I think it's more likely the power play. That is, they would pick the population that is the easiest to command and to push them up the corporate ladder.

There are also Indians who loathe being on such teams and actively seek diverse meritocratic teams, as one of those Indians.

Out of curiosity, do they favor hiring Indians in general, or Hindu Indians in particular. (To the exclusion of Muslim Indians)

Most people (regardless of race) prefer to hire from within their network. It makes sense that Indians' networks would consist of other Indians.

It is not just racist, it also allows all kinds of exploitation and unethical practices.

I briefly worked for one such CEO in a major tech city. Core of Indian H1-B staff coders and about same amount of US white staff in both coding, customer-facing, and administrative roles. A lot of hiring was done rapidly. After less than six months the staff discovered the product being sold was basically a fraud (think summarization & classification of emails that could be handled by ChatGPT today, but back in early 2000s, the work was actually secretly being transmitted to staff in India every night, not the "AI" claimed). Of course, that was just one of the many layers of fractal dishonesty about that CEO and company.

So, within a few weeks the entire white staff quit. During the process of organizing to quit, we also found out we were at least the third wave of [all the white staff quitting]. Of course, through all of these waves of quitting all the H1-Bs stayed, because they had no choice.

Ironically, if it had been packaged honestly, it could have been a valuable and profitable service, but that wouldn't have been sellable to VCs (who were also being scammed).

So yes, cheaper, fully compliant with fraudulent practices, and racist to boot. A toxic brew.

Do you see them selectively picking based on the caste of the Indian?

As I understand it, the issue is that the official pathway to hire a permanent foreign worker (PERM status) is very long (18 months+), and most companies don't want to start a process in hopes of hiring someone in a year or more. H1B offers a shortcut, where they can be brought in on a temporary permit, then apply for PERM status. But PERM status requires a bona fide search for American workers; using the H1B shortcut legally would require an awkward job search where you already have an employee in the role, and if an applicant is found the current employee not only loses their job but has to literally leave the country. So instead of getting into that awkward situation, employers are faking the "bona fide search" requirement and trying to hand the green card status directly to the H1B even when Americans are available that could do that job.

That said... there is still the question of why companies choose to go down this road instead of simply hiring Americans. We can speculate about their intentions (cost saving via lower wages, employees willing to work more hours and under worse conditions, racism, etc) but it's unlikely that they're violating federal law just for fun. This is a lot of hoops to jump through and risk to take on without a compelling reason to do so.

Isn’t it funny that in the past the only thing you had to do was simply show up?

"The "hacker ethos" seems to be in decline, for any number of interconnected reasons"

> vastly prefers to import foreign labor rather than hire local

Salaries are extremely high in SV, why would they bother hiring foreigners if they can find good candidates locally?

I work in a big US tech company, and I do interview lots of candidates. Most of them graduated outside of the US. I can't believe that leadership would go to such great lengths to avoid local candidate. I think there are just not enough qualified applicants.

Nope, Infosys and friends aside, in SV companies would rather hire green card holders and US citizens because you have to sponsor the H1B/park and get a L-1, and sponsor the green card process. You just can’t ignore foreign talent, otherwise you’ll miss out on an incredible number of good employees

> the wage suppression

Do immigrants earn less than locals?

My impression is that the salary is similar. I am not in the US, but I rejected job offers from across the pond in the past and the salary seemed to be on the level with what I know is paid in the US for that position.

My guess is that what they like in H1B workers is that they are sort of stuck with that employer, as changing jobs under such a Visa can be tricky no?

It's just outsourcing training/education (again, the first wave already happened circa 2009-2013).

>It makes no sense to source outside of the US when qualified American workers cannot get jobs.

This. It's getting to a boiling point now with so many people out of work who are more than qualified for these jobs being shunned from them, and now they are fighting back. I'm sure there are many here who work in tech that can relate who have gone through hundreds, possibly thousands, of applications and not hearing anything back.

Then work for a body shop for 1/4 the billing rate in Arizona, Lansing or whatever. You can get a better gig at Burger King.

There’s two ends to this market, the super smart people and the super dumb jobs. The volume is in people slinging COBOL, J2EE or whatever for awful wages.

The reality is the H1B in the dumb categories are keeping jobs onshore. Nobody is paying 2x for the work… the alternative is shipping everything, including the “better IT” and administrative jobs offshore.

Outsourcing needs to be eliminated. If the company is doing 20% of their business in Ohio, 20% of their workforce needs to be in Ohio. 12% in NY State, 12% of the workers need to be in NY State etc.

To your point, the sense is that diploma mills exist and the corporations mostly want bodies to work 20 hours a day and indentured servitude is what they want most. That 25% tax on international workers is nothing. It will be gamed like the tax code.

If we want to fix things, the Double Dutch/Irish/ Shell companies need to be eliminated. Stock buy backs also need to be eliminated. There is no reason for it to be allowed, it is direct manipulation.

When Corps have to pay their fair share, they'll invest in people as a expense and write it off. Which is what they were doing before tax evasion, outsourcing, and the shell game.

Eliminate the tax evasion and punish corps with fines until they are above board.

I have no problem with giving the job to someone overseas but they can do that on their home turf.