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.
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.
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.
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.
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 The EB green card rules are highly outdated and a reform is long overdue.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.
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 They post a PERM position and then have to apply the H1B worker to it due to outdated immigration laws.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I am supportive of visas for highly skilled workers and immigration in general. However I see many H1-Bs being hired that are frankly overqualified for the work they are end up doing (especially stuff like exploratory QA or entry level operations tasks). I'm not sure we need to import people to do this work.
I think the tech industry in the US should be looking at American non-college graduates to do this kind of work, especially people from families without a history of college degrees. This would be easier than teaching people how to code and it would be a great foot in the door to the tech industry and a solid middle class career, even if they never become coders.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to take someone's family history into account when determining whether or not they're qualified to do a certain job. Why should the fact that someone's grandfather went to college hurt them in getting one of these jobs for "people from families without a history of college degrees"?
Even if you think this is good for purposes of equity or whatever, how far back do you go? My maternal grandfather was an attorney but neither of my parents went to college. Which group do I fit into?
I wasn't proposing making it a standard for qualification. More like changing job requirements to be attainable to a broader swath of workers and recruiting in areas that we wouldn't normally, like inner city high school grads.
> especially people from families without a history of college degrees.
No adult should ever be judged by the "sins of their fathers" in any capacity. Family history should only be a consideration when it's medical history.
That's one way to twist "lifting people out of generational poverty", but OK.
Fine. Let's just give preference to people who didn't have the privilege of having a college-educated adult as their legal guardian or personal responsible for their upbringing.
I actually dont think its the corporation doing this, its just their ranks are filled with mostly H1Bs, who want to hire other H1Bs from their home countries. This practice is absolutely rampant in tech companies. Orgs and departments commonly organize along racial and country of origin lines. I see this at some of the most well known tech companies. Yet I never hear a word spoken of it
It's the ugly side of diversity. When everyone's so busy being "antiracist" they turn a blind eye to racism from the "underprivileged". There's this mass delusion that only one ethnic group is capable of racism, and when they are on the receiving end it's deserved.
I am not sure why you equate diversity with inclusion. It's hard to see why members of a team 100% consisting of folks from Laos would feel less "included" in the work/company life than a team of 80% folks from Laos and 20% from Peru.
It's generally accepted now that more diversity has multiple business benefits, from IC level up to board of directors. And paid referrals tend to attract similar demographics and backgrounds. I only have anecdotal data.
I honestly didn't read the article, Google can give you more info/data than I can. I vaguely recall HBR has had some good articles on it the last couple of years.
Do you want data on how diversity is beneficial to the bottom line? Or how paid referrals can contribute to homogenized employee demographics and less diversity?
If you are truly curious and want to have a meaningful conversation I'm all for that. Otherwise there is plenty of material out there for you to google/research yourself.
The first one. I have no doubt paid referrals reduce diversity in nationalities. Your claim was that lack of diversity has a cost to the company. What is the cost?
it has nothing to do with referrals. its people who never met eachother but favor each other based on country of origin. such that certain orgs don't speak english at all
> its people who never met eachother but favor each other based on country of origin
First off, citation needed that discrimination based on national origin is widespread. It's illegal and you should blow the whistle if you have actual knowledge of such acts.
Second, "You're looking to hire X? My husband's friends's cousin is looking for an X role. Can I have her contact you?" => is a very common way of getting job interviews no matter what your nationality. If knowledge about the position is only propagated through personal and professional networks, the applicant pool will reflect that.
> such that certain orgs don't speak english at all
Sounds like bad management. If you believe in the free market, these businesses will fail. But I don't think they're breaking any laws, unless they discriminate against candidates that don't know this language (which is, again illegal, and you should report them).
no one really wants to upturn their entire life for a discrimination lawsuit for a practice that doesn’t even effect them. if you’ve worked at any fang orlarge tech company you’ve seen it. But it doesn’t affect you really if you’re not on one of the teams.
and some of it may not even be explicit discrimination but self sorting. If i’m interviewing with multiple teams am i really going to join the one whose primary communication mechanism is in chinese/hindi and i’m the only american there? or choose the americanized team
Disregarding slowdowns due to both Trump's slashing of funding and COVID, for the majority of H-1B holders, it is a 2-3 year pathway.
People think otherwise because they have a special (very lengthy) backlog for Indians, and to some extent Chinese. Until about 2018, if you were from another country, 3 years was longer than the average to convert H-1B to a Green Card. Lots of people would get it in less than 2 years.
Are you sure the majority of H-1B holders aren't in that lengthy backlog? If this random page [1] is close to correct, people from India were granted half the H-1Bs, and China another nearly 10%, so it already started witrh a majority being backlogged from issuance, then as others clear the backlog in say 3 years and these take much longer, the holder demographic becomes even more of a majority of people waiting for the giant backlog.
I'm still not really sure why there's such a strict limit on green cards per country of origin, when countries have such a wide variety of population or even area. What if India decided they wanted to make things easier for expatriates as well as increase their influence wherever number of countries count and break into the 28 states and 8 union territories.
Suddenly, they could get a 35 more votes at the UN and a ton more green cards. They could all be individual countries, under the banner of the Indian Union which sets fiscal policy and manages the currency and provide for common defense. There's plenty of space in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 namespace for 36 new entities, and there's lots of good reasons to do it!
The risk there is that some states might start deciding that they want to do something different than what everyone else wants, and they'd be a country afterall.
The Indian numbers are "inflated" as their backlog is high (i.e. they have to petition to renew their H-1B multiple times) - so for example if it takes 12 years for an Indian to get the GC, they petitioned 4-5 times and the "equivalent" percentage is really about a quarter of the figure shown. Whereas a South Korean likely will get the GC without petitioning a second time, so their numbers remain small.
Put another way, if the wait times for Indians was under 3 years, then about 75% or more of the people listed in the Indian count would have gotten their GC a while ago, and would not be counted.
When you adjust for this inflation, it's not obvious that India + China is > 50%. Nevertheless, I agree it is a significant percentage.
The fine is like 8 E7 salaries. Insane how little money that is for facebook. The much greater impact would have been delaying greencard processing for longer. They probably laughed when they found out that is all the fine would be.
It's likely the case that everyone involved knew that facebook would win in court as they were following both the intent and the letter of the law (which badly needs updating). Facebook however was paying a high cost for as long as the suit was ongoing (aiui, all FB PERM processing was stalled until this was resolved), and the government was happy to get a settlement where FB paid anything.
The government said Facebook intentionally created a hiring system in which it denied qualified U.S. workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs that it instead sought to channel to temporary visa holders.
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At the scale Facebook operates at and the number of employees they hire it makes a huge material advantage for them to hire cheaper foreigners for the same task. It is rational behavior. Foreigners are always cheaper for the same task at hand.
The fine they paid is a fraction of their cost savings over the years. Many companies in Silicon Valley deliberately target cheaper foreigners than Americans.
It is pure economics and FB has that built into their hiring model at scale.
The only way to eliminate foreigners undercutting American salaries is to eliminate the foreign labor supply competition.
That of course will not happen as all the big corporations promote all the alphabet soup of visas ranging from F1 to H1 to others.
STEM jobs are the ones foreigners can compete in and depress the salaries of Americans in SV. The jobs that are not at as much risk are the ones that require command of the culture and language and the lay of the land like enterprise sales and marketing functions.
> At the scale Facebook operates at and the number of employees they hire it makes a huge material advantage for them to hire cheaper foreigners for the same task. It is rational behavior. Foreigners are always cheaper for the same task at hand.
In this case though the foreign workers are getting green cards that make it much easier for them to work somewhere else.
> The only way to eliminate foreigners undercutting American salaries is to eliminate the foreign labor supply competition.
Isn't this the 'lump of labor' fallacy? Immigration also creates demand in the countries immigrants move to. The evidence seems to be fairly clear that it doesn't depress wages on average: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-immigration-doesnt-red...
> STEM jobs are the ones foreigners can compete in and depress the salaries of Americans in SV. The jobs that are not at as much risk are the ones that require command of the culture and language and the lay of the land like enterprise sales and marketing functions.
Yet it's these same SV engineering jobs that have seen enormous wage increases over the past decade.
I do think there is potential for restrictive immigration schemes to depress wages by making it hard for people on those schemes to change jobs. That was certainly my experience on a cap-exempt academic H1B where I was ineligible to transfer to a commercial employer as cap-subject H1B employees are allowed to do.
The solution to that is to make sure such immigrants get green cards relatively quickly so they can't be exploited by employers.
I think you're living in a bubble if you still believe foreigners working at FAANG are underpaid compared to the native population. You are paid as per your level.
> The only way to eliminate foreigners undercutting American salaries is to eliminate the foreign labor supply competition.
The problem isn't foreign labor supply, its that the foreign nationals are forced to stick around at bad employers due to the way US immigration is tied to employment instead of credentials and skills.
Comparing US and Canada, A foreign national in Canada who graduates from a STEM degree, and obtains a job, gets to apply for Permanent residency which is not tied to an employer.
On the otherhand in the US the visa (H1B, L1, O1) are all tied to the employer, which means leaving a bad job is difficult to impossible without jeopardizing their legal status in the country.
So FB has all incentives for hiring foreign nationals who have no choice but to stick around at a company that treats them poorly / underpays them.
TL;DR the problem isn't the foreign national or the visas, its that the US immigration system ties visas to a single employer.
>the US immigration system ties visas to a single employer
While this is true for the L1 and one other (I believe J1), I don't understand why people believes this to be true for H1Bs. It's simply false- H1Bs can transfer employers, it just takes a couple of weeks and some paperwork, and thousands do it every year. I know a number of folks professionally who've done it without hassle, and I know a couple people in my personal life who've also transferred.
There is a period when an employer has sponsored you for a Green Card that you probably can't switch, but after the EAD is issued you're free to transfer employers again. Basically, 'H1Bs are tied a single employer' is a widespread urban legend
H-1B visas are tied to a specific employer. The fact that you can move between different employers who will individually agree to sponsor a H-1B position doesn't change that fact.
This is fine when you're talking about moving between large companies with the apparatus to do that, but it does mean that H-1B holders have fewer opportunities with smaller employers or those who simply aren't willing to go through the paperwork.
> H1Bs can transfer employers, it just takes a couple of weeks and some paperwork
My understanding is that yes, this is technically true. However it's not a H1B holder telling the government "I'm taking this new job, FYI", as much as requesting that your transfer be approved. The risk that the transfer will not be, and you're stuck in limbo of returning to the position you just quit, does exist.
For people on these statuses, any required interaction with USCIS can be anxiety inducing.
While it may not technically be tied to a single employer, it's not fair to say that holders have the same flexibility to switch jobs as permanent residents/citizens.
Yes, US immigration system is a mess. I considered emigrating there once, but I would never agree to the kind of slavery that comes with H-1B visa or similar. Last few years, I've been submitting my application for Green Card lottery, because winning it is pretty much the only way of emigrating that doesn't suck, despite small chances of being selected.
So if I'm reading this right, this seems to be about PERM applications.
For context, PERM certification is a required step in the green card application, where a company sponsoring a green card applicant must demonstrate that they posted a job ad for the candidate's position somewhere conspicuous for a sufficient amount of time and that they were not able to find a qualified American applicant.
Where this gets iffy is that because this is part of a green card sponsorship, this is always an advertisement for a position that is already filled by the H1-B holder, who typically has already been at working in that capacity for at least a year, and who literally is only engaging in this process because they intend to immigrate and become a US permanent resident.
There's literally zero incentive for any company to boot an already productive H1-B holder in favor of some random new hire just because of their nationality. Typically, the way this is justified is that the hypothetical new hire must demonstrate the ability to be as productive as the H1-B holder, including having context on the project. Otherwise, it would just cost the company time and money to fire the employed person and hire/onboard the new one for no benefit to the company whatsoever. It would indeed be doubly bad from a reputation perspective since then foreign talent would definitely avoid applying to a company that just boots people and leaves them out in the cold with an invalid residency status forcing them to move back to their home country in a month's window. The justification that companies can't find the talent in the country boils down to that: where were these so called qualified american candidates a year prior to the PERM application? IF they existed then, the company would certainly have preferred to hire them because H1-B/PERM/green card sponsorship actually costs quite a bit of money to the company.
Now, I may be biased, since I'm a green card holder myself, but the thing with PERM is that the H1-B engagement is a mutual investment which started at least a year prior to PERM coming into the picture in the first place (it's an investment by the company, in terms of finding and onboarding a new person and getting them to be productive, as well as by the employee, who works to build context and become necessary to the company). Is it "fair" that one person ought to have the right to just come in after the fact and enjoy the fruits of other people's investments just because of their nationality, especially considering that this entails a losing party who for all intents and purposes was already a productive member of American society working towards acquiring permanent residency status?
No it’s not. Like many other US laws, this one is pretty archaic. We tend to think that laws should be reasonable. Most often than not some of these weird conditions are just ways to placate members of some party and get their votes. So a lot of laws don’t really make much sense in practice, and the US Congress is completely dysfunctional due to structural reasons and severe partisanship so they’re not updating the laws.
For context, a worker on an H1-B can be in the US for a total 6 years. Within that time frame, their employer can sponsor them for a green card, which allows them to stay indefinitely and keep the job. However, through the lens of the government, what actually happens in this transition is that the H1-B worker’s job disappears and a new job appears. The H1-B employee must apply to this job and compete fairly with Americans for it. If they come out winning, they can get a green card. Otherwise, the American gets the job and the foreigner goes home, probably. These job offers have to be posted in a variety of ways endorsed by the government.
From my read looking at other articles on the matter (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/facebook-face-claim...), Facebook is accused of not circulating enough these job postings to and making it too easy for the non-American they already hired to keep their job. They’re not creating jobs that entire populations except the US can see.
You're right. What Facebook is accused of is not putting enough effort into recruiting US workers to show that there's no qualified US worker for the Green Card "positions" that H1B workers have to "apply" to.
Work visas are used as a method of coercion by US companies, and Facebook knows how effective employees can be when they are coerced.
I knew of a professor with a work visa who spoke out against a University policy of oversizing certain classes. They revoked or did not renew his visa (or however the termination of an employer-sponsored visa works), and mid-semester he had a nervous breakdown, was forced to short sell his house, and was forced to go back to his home country.
Honestly, the IT market is seriously broken. It's every person for themselves now. Nobody is looking out for you. Get your equipment, build your lab and do remote work.
Oh no the package of FB SDE offer will shrink… previously they are giving huge package because shortage from the fact they can’t do PERM. Too bad we didn’t catch the train
Why is this a problem? Why are we trying to manipulate Facebook's hiring practices? We may not like it, but they should be free to hire whomever they please.
This may also be a nit-picking response, but the sponsoring company is not the one "giving out" H1B visas. They can sponsor it, and request it, but visas are only issued by the US government.
Actually, recommend you read into it at a little as you're completely wrong on that point.
An H-1B only requires a Labor Condition Application (LCA) which is basically an agreement to pay the prevailing wage and an assertion that there's not an ongoing labor dispute (strike, lockout) ongoing at the proposed location of hire.
From what I've seen is there is a clause that says some employers have to try to recruit U.S. workers when seeking H-1B employees.
However, from what I understood, it only applies employers who have been designated H-1B dependent (something like 15% of their workforce is H-1B) or something like that, or were identified abusers of the program. And even then, there is a salary limit, i.e. if you are paying over $X (which I am assuming facebook is), even if you're workforce is a high enough proportion H-1B you would be dependent, you are still exempt.
The official settlement memo says that key information is all in Attachment A. However, Attachment A was not attached, and as far as I can tell, is nowhere to be found. If anyone should find Attachment A, please inform us of its location.
I'd guess you'd have to start by figuring out if the role you applied for went to a H1B applicant, and then hire a lawyer to see if a lawsuit would be viable.
I wonder if you could make a business out of helping qualified US residents apply to these fake job postings and suing the companies when they get turned down..
The official settlement memo says that key information is all in Attachment A. However, Attachment A was not attached, and as far as I can tell, is nowhere to be found. If anyone should find Attachment A, please inform us of its location.
