For FB, the H1B is largely used for pretty smart people across the globe. Their talent bar is high and so are the salaries. It truly is bringing in the best and brightest from around the world. There's also the debate about how confusing/outdated the PERM process can be.

For the WITCH companies, it's likely undercutting American talent.

Which is why the lawsuit is so ridiculous, why not go after the real perpetrators of H1B problems, consulting companies. Cognizant for example, known abuser of the system to bring in low cost exploitable talent. There's so much shady going on in the system but FB is probably one of the better actors.

I thought another reason H1Bs are preferred by tech companies is because it limits the opportunities that your high skilled employee have access to, as far as I'm aware it's harder and riskier to switch jobs without getting deported if you're on a H1B visa which means the employees will put up with worse treatment and worse wages compared to native colleagues, though I'm fuzzy on the specifics

I can't speak for FB, but in my experience, you don't seek H1B holders out. Instead you recruit the best talent, and if the person you want to hire requires an H1B, then you jump through the legal hoops necessary to bring them onboard.

This. My company (Fortune 100) tells me not to discuss immigration status during the interview process. Oftentimes, the first time I discover that I'm hiring a candidate that's on an H-1B is when I find out they're going to be in the onboarding pipeline for longer due to immigration-related paperwork.

It certainly doesn't figure into hiring decisions or compensation.

H1B visas aren't "preferred", it's the only visa available for skilled immigration for most people.

It's harder but very much possible to switch company on an H1B visa - my partner did this recently and while there's a bunch of legal work and waiting around, for tech companies it's all just part of the process.

that's only the case if company intentionally delays application process for green card, which usually takes 1.5 year (unless applicant is form the country that hit the per-country limit, like India). 1.5 year "guaranteed" retention is not that significant to deal with visas/GC. Companies that do intentionally delay the GC process, that's different story, they can stretch the application for many years and have leverage over H1B holder. But that's not FB.

> which usually takes 1.5 year

In my experience it takes WAY longer than that, just on processing times. As in, I've never even heard of anyone getting permanent residency that quickly, at least for employment-based. If you are talking about marriage or family-based, sure.

Any audits or RFEs during the process and you are looking easily at twice the time you quoted. Probably even more - given the recent delays in the H4 extension process, which causes your own application to have to wait until your dependents can join you.

Employment based (EB2) and i know many people who's process took similar ~1.5 year plus/minus couple month. Though that's been about 5 years ago, haven't kept up since going thru it myself. No RFEs/audits, they where not common back then at least.

I'm at almost 3 years for a marriage based petition currently (US citizen no less). The grass isn't that much greener on the other side, the immigration system isn't scaled to the volume of applicants at any step of the process.

The system is used by various players for various means. For places like Amazon, I'd be more inclined to believe those kinds of stories. For FB specifically, as it pertains to this case and lawsuit, I'd be less inclined to believe that they are specifically selecting for abusable people on visa. The WITCH consulting companies absolutely use the visa in terrible ways.

wrong. At facebook, which is classified as h1b dependent having over 15% foreign nationals, and likely over 50% foreign nationals there is corruption. Virtually all interviews and hiring decisions are made by h1b foreign nationals. It is ludicrous to say they would fairly evaluate US citizens who do not support immigration which is supplying thezs h1bs with $300k per year jobs.

I think the WITCH companies supply contracts to FB too right?

Pray tell what special skills a foreign "art director" has than an American doesn't?

> Pray tell what special skills a foreign "art director" has than an American doesn't?

If the position is for a company that specializes in French designs, I think it's likely that a French art director might have a better understanding of the domain than an American does.

I like how Hollywood gets a free pass on this. I wonder how it would look with American-only actors.

There's a lot of nuance to this issue, it's not that simple. I say this as a 6th generation American. Here's a good write up:

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-doj-lawsuit-unfair-...

Facebook was doing the opposite.

accused the social-media company of illegally reserving lucrative jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence instead of searching for and considering available U.S. workers.

I think everybody rightly assumes they reserved those spots precisely so they could underpay them.

One can dispute the facts of the article, but the quoted sentence specifically says 'lucrative'.

Facebook pays new grads 200K and Staff engineers 700K. Had to call it underpayment.

> compared to the scope of H1B fraud.

Which is largely overblown for political gain.

Some companies abuse/have abused the program - mostly large consultancies. Focus on that.

H1 is a US superpower. Companies can pick brains among the entire planet(many of those brains WANT to be picked). At essentially no cost to the country.

Yes, each one will 'take' a job, but how many jobs are created by immigrants? The yearly cap is 65k. One Elon Musk generates more than that.

> underpay

Check the article, it is talking about "lucrative" jobs.

> Does America not have schools

Are you talking about the ridiculously expensive universities(and higher education in general)? Maybe fix that?

>"At essentially no cost to the country."

What about citizens who are otherwise passed up for a career? I've worked with plenty of H1B's and none particularly stood out as "top minds" that were uniquely capable of doing the office work. While I have no doubt that the US is able to poach some seriously intelligent folks, I have a deep cynicism that corporations use H1B's to hire cheaply and bypass the obligations that come with hiring a citizen.

> how many jobs are created

Yeah, somebody has to drive their taxis, clean their clothes, sweep their floors and serve their coffee.

>Are you talking about the ridiculously expensive universities(and higher education in general)? Maybe fix that?

Interesting question that. I think the issue is that corporations realized training employees was a cost center and decided to outsource as much of it as possible to, as you said, ridiculously expensive universities. Of course no general education could ever be perfectly aligned with the individual needs of millions of unique positions at different corporations. The fix here is for companies to reopen their own training pipelines.

> I think the issue is that corporations realized training employees was a cost center and decided to outsource as much of it as possible to, as you said, ridiculously expensive universities.

As a university professor, hoo boy is that a bad bet. I have a lot of goals in the classroom, but training future employees is not one of them; and, despite the corporatist mindset of my (and I suspect most) university's administration, there is no guidance from the university that that should be a goal.

Yeah, it's a bad fit. Doesn't mean that wasn't the corporate intent.