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.