[NovemberWhiskey]

The unstated truth here is that when you advertise in order to get PERM certification, you really don't actually want to get applications. The 99% scenario is you've already got an employee who is on a non-immigrant visa, that you're invested in, and that you want to get onto the green card trajectory.

[VinLucero]

What are the incentives at Play here? You seem to know the rules of the game.

[bubblethink]

Here's the lay of the land:

1) You can hire temp workers on visas relatively easily and in large numbers. This benefits employers, politicians, economy, etc.

2) These workers need permanent status. US immigration is uniquely regressive in that everything flows through the employer in most cases and visa holders have no agency. So the employer needs to petition for a "permanent" employee.

3) So although these people are already employed, the employer needs to go through a PERM process where they advertise the job and claim to the gov. that they couldn't hire anyone else and this is the most qualified employee for the job.

4) Although it's a farce, DOJ gets mad if there is a perception that the employer tried to make the PERM process more favorable to the employee they already have.

[NovemberWhiskey]

And if this doesn't make it seem farcical enough: you would think that an employee who'd been working at your firm would have lots of unique skills and familiarity with corporate processes, technology etc. that are valuable, and that you could write a job description that required those.

But no - your immigration law firm will tell you that you absolutely can't do that, and that you have to pretend to hire into some kind of imaginary position that reflects the knowledge and skills of someone in the job market who would qualify but for the fact that they don't have skills that could only be acquired at your firm.

[cogman10]

For a non-citizen, becoming a citizen is a long process (Generally more than a few years). To actually stay in the US and move the process along employer sponsorship is key.

This long process incentives non-citizens to do work at below market rates and to put up with less than ideal employment treatment. Which is great for most businesses as they can get a dev for cheap that they can work for long hours and hold their current residency in the US hostage (it's not a simple process to switch employers).

However, the law has on the books for programs like this and H1B that a company has to have first failed to fill their position with a US citizen. Apple is not unique here in fudging the "tried to fill the position" requirement. I suspect there's more than a few big name company's HR departments seeing this news and getting a little worried.

I should note, the law also says PERM employees should be payed market rate... but market rate is a flexible thing and PERM employees are much less likely to complain.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Say you have an employee that you've hired on an H-1B. They're a high-performer, and you want to retain them. You can only (not really, but mostly) stay beyond six years in the US on an H-1B if you're on a green card trajectory - meaning that your employer has at least got a pending labor certification application for your position.

Getting labor certification involves demonstrating that you've made a good faith effort to hire a US native worker to fill the position. So you have to try to hire into the role; but you really don't want the search to succeed - because you've already got a good employee that's a known quantity.

Getting labor certification is a pre-requisite to getting an I-140, which is a pre-requisite to the employee getting the green card. Failing to achieve labor certification just delays the entire process and means yet more paperwork and time with the immigration attorneys.

[filoleg]

Incentive: you already have an employee on a visa working for you. They are a solid proven employee that you already invested money and other resources into (hiring/recruiting costs, onboarding, training, visa paperwork, time of other engineers helping them out during onboarding, etc.). The employee understandably wants to continue working here or, at least, remain in the country. You, as the employer, can either sponsor their green card and go through PERM or risk losing them in the near future (either to a competitor who is willing to sponsor it or due to them leaving the country voluntarily or them getting hit with some visa issues further on). The incentive here is clear.

So you decide to sponsor their green card process (as it makes sense in pretty much every aspect). Part of the application requirements is documentation proving that the employee that you are sponsoring isn’t displacing local workers and is truly high skill (given that H1B visa to green card conversion is intended for high-skill workers). The way that a lot of employers seem to be doing it is posting lowkey ads in newspapers and other places that technically would qualify, but that are unlikely to catch interest of potential candidates and are way more likely to go unnoticed. Then you wait some period of time. I don’t remember how long it is more precisely, but i remember that it is somewhere between 1-6 months. In the end, you got the document required to go forward with the process.

My guess is that for large tech companies like FAANG it wouldn’t work like that, as their job postings are everywhere. But i think the fact that their interviews are notoriously difficult to pass (relative to most jobs outside of tech, where getting an interview itself is usually way more difficult, but once you got it, you are more likely to pass), that might work as a documented proof. Not sure, as I have never observed how those companies handle it, but I have seen some small employers do variations of the dance that I have described in the previous paragraph.