PERM applies to both EB2 and EB3 (so in real world anyone making from as low as $50k+/year depending on role qualifies) and most bodyshops apply for green card for all employees - it's just part of business cost. For EB2 PhD is not needed - MS from online paper mill is enough. For EB3, any degree works.

It's not tens of thousands in cost - it's below $10k all in. PERM Fees to USCIS are around $1200.

The whole system is abused to the end and need to be completely gutted and redone so high end engineer working for Google making $700k was differentiated from Wipro employee making $80k. Right now they are in the same queue. Prevailing wage is a joke as it does not include stock options and does not reflect real salary levels.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/NASA-Scientist-Salaries-E73...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/senior-scient...

I no longer know the current prices for EB2 total cost. But years back I know the cost was >10K+ per employee, accounting for multiple filings, expedited filings, lawyer fee, etc. I doubt it would be below 10K now. Even an NIW can cost 15K easily by going to a law firm and personally haggle the price with them. Can you tell me how do you know EB2 cost less than 10K?

An online paper mill graduate would have a very hard time passing EB2 vetting. Where would they get the paper citations, the impact, the achievements required? Unless they have years of experience in which they made clear they are valuable enough to the field. That is why I said experienced masters. And you think USCIS don't look at what institution the applicant comes from?

Nope. Not at all. I am rather intimately familiar with lot of people who have gone through that vaunted EB2 vetting with their fake US or foreign degrees, fake job experiences at fake companies with fake addresses and so on.

Few may get caught but most of them will get through the system with enough persistence.

NASA scientists don’t work on rockets; they design experiments for space missions and stuff like that.

Nurses make way less than 700k and should probably be the absolute top of the list.

Citizens of Republics are given the inherent right to debate matters of public policy concern.

I personally think that there should be an open door - don't be a drag on society - policy. If you can get a job, pay your bills - welcome to the USA.

Would that explain why their salaries have skyrocketed over the past few decades?

MBA education system is irrelevant too as it does not produce CEOs - it produces L4/L5 PMs few of whom after 30 years of stellar career will climb to be CEOs.

actually, nurses are. The process apple discriminated in from the article, nurses are considered by statute to be "approved" so they just move on to the next step (i140/i485 or visa) which is just a rubber stamp assuming all the documents are in order.

> nurses to bypass the PERM certification process is the Schedule A designation. Schedule A is a list of pre-certified occupations that the Department of Labor (DOL) has determined there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available. Because of this, employers seeking to hire foreign workers in these occupations do not need to go through the labor certification process, which is what PERM involves.

There is society need to drive down unreasonable salaries (700k at Google) - at minimum more cool stuff will be done in US. It’s much less clear that there is society need to drive down middle class salaries.

> Often, it requires an advance degree and higher qualification than H1B too, PhDs or experienced masters.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the PERM process applies when H1B holders seek to gain permanent residency too - at least that's been my experience. It also applies to the L1 etc:

https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/h-1b-green-card-transitio...

PERM certification is required to get a GC on an H1B (it's not needed to get an H1B, just required when the H1B holder seeks to get permanent residency).

There's another side to this story that the media reporting almost never mentions on this; many in the PERM process have lived in the USA for a long time and established families, children, communities etc. To deny them during PERM literally means in many cases to ship them and their American children "home" to a country they may not have seen for 20 years. In some cases the American kids won't even be able to speak the main language of their parent's birth country.

The solution as always is pretty simple - we need to divorce immigration status from employment - the processes should not be linked. This would at a stroke remove incentives for less scrupulous employers to abuse the system too.

If even a law trying to let US-educated PhDs getting an H1B easier (just to work, not GC) get blocked, you know how anti-immigration the current political climate is.

It's not rigorous or demanding; it's a mostly pointless bureaucratic exercise in bogus paperwork where lawyers and the gov. make bank. From the article : It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions," the DOJ said.

>Apple actually felt it was worth it

Apple doesn't feel. It's just commonsense and market pressure. The alternative would be indefinite indentured servitude.

Dept. of Labor takes a year to evaluate these PERM applications. PERM has charmingly quaint requirements like taking out an ad in a Sunday newspaper so that applicants can apply and other nonsense. All while the employee is already working for the company on a visa. The whole thing is farcical.

Well, that certainly explains why I saw Lucid advertising in a New Orleans free newspaper and applied and got nothing but a rejection.

I love how people always think that The Government™ does things to make money, rather some congressman from the Bible Belt just engaging in straight up xenophobia.

If the PERM process at Apple is anything like what I saw at Facebook a couple of years ago, then all these “applicants” are actually people already working at the company on non-immigrant visas whom the company wants to retain.

There is no reason to assume that they’re being paid any less than others at Apple. They’re already in the country and have been doing the work for years. Why not give them a path to a green card? Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

I’ll admit that I’m biased because I was in this process at one point. But the notion that I was taking the job of a native-born American was ridiculous because I had been doing the job in London before. So if anything, I brought a UK job to USA. And to turn that into a green card, the company would have to advertise the job on their website. It makes no sense.

Indeed. I really doubt Apple prefers foreigners in their hiring (it's a rather significant hassle to bring somebody in). If anything, citizens have some edge.

But once an immigrant has been hired, the PERM process essentially would require trying to hire for that position again, and employers (not just Apple) are anything but motivated to replace an experienced and qualified employee with several years' experience at the company with an untested new hire, so they treat this process as a Kabuki performance.

> If anything, citizens have some edge.

Citizens have also more rights and companies love to have these clause that make you get your head down and work no questions asked - which makes conditions generally worse for everyone else.

The solution here is to increase and qualify the local workforce, and at the same time make the bar even higher for those from outside, starting from sanctioned countries.

All I have to go on is 20+ years of employment at Apple, including several years as a H1B and Green Card holder. Can't possibly compete with your sincerely held beliefs.

> Citizens have also more rights and companies love to have these clause that make you get your head down and work no questions asked

This is undoubtedly the case for some H1B employers, but Apple is not a body shop style operation. Firings are extremely rare, H1Bs and citizens work side by side, and I have never seen the former more hesitant to speak up than the latter.

You might want to entertain the thought that Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, or Betrand Serlet were not really hired for their pliability, but because they were genuinely qualified.

> The solution here is to increase and qualify the local workforce

That would definitely be helpful. But the trend seems to go the other way, with it being fashionable for opinion leaders to tell people to forego college, and education becoming more and more of a luxury.

> and at the same time make the bar even higher for those from outside

… forcing companies who prefer to hire the best qualified candidates over those with the "right" passport to shift their development activities elsewhere.

You lost me at this point. Many more qualified less pliable candidates exist but neither are the reason for their hiring.

In general the most qualified person rarely gets the position. The easiest to bend is usually what power seeks.

"Power" also seeks competence. There's no one aspect that is sought is enough to to drown out all the others when hiring, at least not without an outside force requiring it.

Do employers want employees that are easy to deal with? Obviously. Is that more important then skill and ability? It depends not only on the employer, but also probably the job being hired for, but nobody wants to hire an unqualified candidate over a qualified one.

Part of being a Marxist (parent comment) or an anti-immigrationist (grandparent comment) is that you're required to believe any statement anyone makes that has the right words in it. Even though you have no evidence for them.

People are not damand, I have no idea what that even means in the relevant context.

The number of job openings isn't constant over longer than like a day. What you're doing here is called partial equilibrium analysis.

> People are not damand, I have no idea what that even means in the relevant context.

That you missed econ 201?

People are demand because they buy things. Employees increase demand for other employees because jobs are created by "comparative advantage", and as long as your company is growing it's not possible to run out of that, although it does grow more specialized.

Is FAANG hiring a lot of people from Cuba, North Korea or Iran?

Although Iranians are pretty good at tech and I know a sr. distinguished Iranian engineer at Apple. That's even better than distinguished! Can't beat that.

I’m more talking about the wholesale scale from other dictatorship countries, under export control restrictions.

Because it's illegal to (positively) discriminate for these people and shield them from competing with American citizens and GC-holders for jobs.

> Why make the company jump through hoops like having to advertise a position that’s not actually open?

Creating a fake position to end-run immigration law is illegal.

If the individuals are more skilled than citizens, the Apple should have been prepared to open the interviews for those jobs to everyone (including citizens and permanent residents), selected the (person they knew to have been) the best and gotten the paperwork in order. The subterfuge would be completely unnecessary if they applied under the correct visa class and skills of those involved are as advertised.

The laws governing immigration are very specific about the distinctions between visa classes and the requirements for each class- and the devil is in the details.

> The competition and interviews already happened when the person was first hired.

Perhaps, but that is your and Apple's (tacit) opinions. The government of the United States disagrees, and Apple just paid $25 million dollars to avoid getting this issue in front of a judge.

The difference in opinion, AFAICT, is you think a GC is a reward for getting a job after besting others (including citizens) in interviews. The government's contention is that the bar is higher: PERM is for jobs no American citizen or permanent resident are able and willing to do[1]. There are separate visa classes for being merely good, and being irreplaceable. Pretending that a candidate who is in the former group belongs to the latter by posting jobs on a noticeboard in an unlit basement without stairs is dishonest.

1. "The DOL must certify to the USCIS that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment"

No, the difference in opinion is the absurdity of it all. To the extent that the government (DOL) can influence the labor market, for any practical benefit, it needs to do so at the outset and quickly. The market is already altered here with a large immigrant workforce where there are no restrictions on being a temporary worker - even for years or decades. They just have fewer rights. And it doesn't even work as intended. Let's say that Apple wants to hire a permanent employee directly. The PERM process takes a year. Should every company just wait for a year so that DOL can get it together before they can hire employees ? They do what the current regulations permit - bring them as temp workers and let the PERM thing resolve in the background.

Some would welcome the reduced influx of immigrants. But in the long term, it would cripple the US. If an individual can convince a company to sponsor them, they are already highly qualified and productive to society. If you deny even these people from immigrating here, then who would you let in? You turn them away and China or the EU would gladly take them. Meanwhile, you lose a significant portion of your workforce that contribute tax without ever withdrawing from it and a lot of research and development at the PhD and master levels done at minimum wages.

The current situation benefits the US a lot. There is a reason why they are hesitating to make any big reform. The US is having the chance to exploit the world's best and brightest all for a few pieces of paper a year. At most there are 140K permanent residents being made each year via this route. It is insignificant compared to the millions of US college graduate annually. The argument about "they took our jobs" is not really valid to me.

Firstly, there's a good reason the people in question want to go the US instead of China or the EU. EU salaries are much lower and the local language is always a barrier. The same holds for China, salaries can be higher but not US level and then there's all the other obvious drawbacks of living there.

Secondly, China also wouldn't gladly take them, it's the direct opposite

> if you don't dangle this GC reward

In China a GC-like reward is unfathomable.

Sometimes there is a shortage of domestic candidates with sufficient qualifications and experience in the general field. Sometimes the job is highly specialized, and nobody outside of a handful of internal candidates can possibly do it without extensive training. Sometimes the candidate was selected according to the established standards of a profession, and the job only exists for that particular person. And so on.

A fake application process is dishonest, regardless of whether it looks like a real job opportunity or is intentionally kept hidden. But if the process is open and you know in advance that no other candidate can possibly qualify, you are being not only dishonest but also impolite. Unrelated people may apply thinking it's a real job opportunity, wasting their time.

This isn’t even wrong.

Obviously you displaced a US citizen unless you’re trying to advance the risible position that no US citizen could do what you do.

I'm not sure this is obvious. 1) Apple is a multi-national company, and hires an employee in the UK. 2) This employee relocates to the US

At what point do they displace the US citizen? All Apple jobs are not earmarked for US citizens (+residents, etc...), and they're already doing the job when they move to the US. Unless they're hired abroad for the express purpose of relocating to the US, then it's not "obvious" to me that they've displaced anyone.

Suppose I work in an org with dev teams in multiple countries. If I relocate from one site to another, am I freeing up a slot in the country I leave and taking one in the country I move to?

My comment argues that independent of government policy, relocating an existing employee from one country to another does not consume a position that was otherwise free, unless the employee was hired expressly for the purpose of relocation.

There is a special visa for this. In the US it is an L1 visa.

If one quits, nothing says you'll find another one, and you may keep going with one less person.

I didn't displace anyone because the headcount in my department was global, not tied to location.

I know it's hard to accept for people with old-fashioned nationalist ideas about immigration, but a lot of well-paid jobs these days can be done anywhere in the world.

These are not jobs in America, but rather they are jobs at American companies. And you're doing your best to make sure the job doesn't get done in America.

For myself, I left the US but still work for an American company. They pay me a California-level salary but I pay my taxes to Finland. From your point of view that must be somehow better than if I was doing the same job but paying taxes to USA? You're losing out on the tax revenue, but at least you don't have people like me as neighbors, so all is good, I guess.

Hiring workers does not displace other workers because they come with increased demand for labor of their own. It does increase specialization on the team because you need to find comparative advantage, but that's nearly as much of an issue.

Anyhow his theory rests on assumptions that are nonsensical in today’s economy.[1]

Instead we have “labor arbitrage” which is to say workers being displaced.

[1] https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1674...

Sure there is. The fact that permanent residency costs money and is often desirable means that there is value in a PERM position over a comparable one with no path to permanent residency. Therefore it is only natural for applicants to require less money to find the compensation desirable.

I think you mean cheaper employee.

I work for a fully remote company. Most of us are based in the US but the company also hires people from some other countries through some kind of agency. Even though many, probably a majority of the US-based people are immigrants (myself included), and many don't speak English any better than the agency people, there's still somehow a clear divide. The agency people are great - talented, skilled, no issues. But somehow they understand the business less. Their contributions are purely technical. It's clear that the company could not just can us all and hire the same number of agency guys, but it's hard to explain why.

My previous employer once tried to outsource some stuff to India and sent a guy over there to oversee it. It didn't go well. But we had lots of Indian people before and since in the company, and they were great. They had the same background, same education. But they were local to the company.

I often think of the first iPhone as an extreme example of what I'm trying to say. It was built in China using parts sourced from China. But it was invented in California, and it had to be. From the inventors and the builders there's a sort of spectrum, a range of people, like the developers who conceived and wrote the first killer apps - and the closer you are to the inventing side of things, the closer you need to be to the heart of the company.

If I had to put sum it up in a word, I'd say it's "ambiguity". Knowing what to do when you don't have exact instructions requires you to be steeped in the same culture as the CEO and the main market. This isn't a fixed thing: I'm sure there's a market for luxury devices in China now that Americans find it hard to understand. But in general the countries that are the most developed have already experienced what other countries are going through, and thus they are uniquely positioned to dictate what the next big thing is.

So companies will always have to do some hiring locally, and the harder the job, the more important it is to be local.

Simply speaking, it's better to expand vertically because it's a lot easier to work with people in the same time zone. That's one reason tech is on the west coast.

Because people are not automatons, there are often situations where a company has offices in, say, New York and Zurich, and some employees in the New York office moved from Zurich and some employees in the Zurich office moved from New York.

So it does not help retention in the way you believe.

It is beneficial for retention because companies who don't apply for green cards for employees will lose them to firms that apply.

You're saying that Apple can't find people from less-developed countries with these specific credentials and then offer them a starting salary that's $100k under what they would have needed to offer to someone from California?

> because they are for all legal purposes, an equal to any American once they have EB2.

Equal to an American in legal rights perhaps, but there is no right to competitive pay.

The theoretical factor that's supposed to depress pay for workers on non-immigrant visas is that they don't have easy job mobility - the bar to hire an H-1B is much higher than to hire a US native worker. Once you have an EB-2 (an immigrant visa, that entitles you to a Green Card), that no longer applies - modulo national-security type positions that require citizenship you're just as hirable as a US native.

There’s more to it than that, but that’s one of the big ones. Have you worked with foreign contractors/outsourcing before? If so you know why jumping to another job would be difficult.

Wage depression is a function of being willing and able to work in the field, not of residency type.

Residency type can only depress individual wages for the person with the odd residency.

That's being generous. I'm pretty sure that for people born in India the backlog is well over 100 years. The reason being that only 7500 green cards per year can be issued to people of any particular nationality. If there are 750k Indians with approved GC applications under employment category, that's a 100 year backlog. I'm sure there's a statistic somewhere, and I remember reading an article a couple of years back that claimed that this particular backlog has surpassed 90 years, so it's not unthinkable that today it's over 100.

EB2 final action date for Indian nationals is currently at 01JAN12. Which means that USCIS is currently processing applications from almost 12 years ago. Which means they have to wait a decade before their application even gets approved.

There are people that will quite literally never see an EB2 or EB3 green card in their lives despite having an approved application. The only viable path to a green card for those is marrying a US citizen, period. (as that category has no cap or quota whatsoever)

PERM is one stage in the Green Card process. (it goes: PERM -> I140 -> I485. https://maggio-kattar.com/three-stages-employer-sponsored-pe...)

https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/gree...

If you're afraid of foreign competition, you should be worried about H1B and similar visas (visas for foreigners willing to slot into a normal "skilled" position), which this article isn't touching on at all. Those are the visas of your peers that companies are willing to hire extranationally.

While it's true these people already work there etc. etc. EB2, just like EB3, requires the DOL certification that "there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment". [1]

This sucks for firms like Apple because there are quite enough U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take a whole bunch of jobs that are being held by a BS with 5 years of experience... Imagine you are an officer of the U.S. government and a lawyer from Apple sends you an application for a, for example, front end developer. Will you honestly believe that there are literally no U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to take such a job? At Apple no less. It's not "some folks won't take a job at Apple/FB/Google/etc for political reasons, so there!". It's literally a claim that there are no US citizens or LPRs who could do that job. How credible you'd think such a claim is?

1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/perm...

Very credible, because people already employed don’t really count. It doesn’t matter at what company.

Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

And that’s how it works. Otherwise there would be no need for immigration in this sector at all.

Why don't they count? Already employed people are recruited by Apple, I get spammed by Apple recruiters, I know a dozen of people who had been poached by Apple from various companies. Apple does hire people who are already employed, they pay quite a bit more so many employed people are looking if not for increased prestige then for increased TC.

>Imagine someone leaves whatever company they are at to take the role at Apple. Now the company the employee left has an opening that can’t be filled.

I am not sure I follow, this is obviously false on its face. Why exactly can not it be filled?

Because eventually you’ll run out of people that can be hired.

Unless you’re making an argument that there are more software developers than job openings in the US, which is patently false.

And more importantly, this case is more about people who were already employed at Apple, on a non-immigrant visa, that Apple wished to retain permanently. I see no actual wrongdoing here. A tried and tested employee is ALWAYS better than an unknown one.

I am not sure I am following again. Have you worked anywhere at all or know anybody who worked somewhere? Ask them, the positions get filled, nobody runs out of people, and Apple is doubly so.

>Unless you’re making an argument that there are more software developers than job openings in the US, which is patently false.

No, I am making argument that there are able, qualified and willing US software developers, or any other professionals, available to take any job at Apple.

I hope that by this you mean Native Americans. Or are colonizers now considered native citizens?