Apple discriminated against US citizens in hiring, DOJ says
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Parsing through your wall of text, it doesn't seem you know how hiring works at large companies. In mine, yes, as a hiring manager, I was expected to draft job requirements, which were reviewed by someone in the hiring screening department and we would adjust as appropriate. The relevant phrase was "Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience." I was told by a mucky-muck in a major technology company that in their company, the only person NOT allowed to participate in a hiring decision was the eventual boss of that person.
The side shot at Disney also misses. All of its movies are made essentially with beta versions of the supporting software, which is continually evolving with every project. I live in Orange County and know many of these people. They live locally. No doubt, they offshore a good chunk of the work, but it evolves quickly, and takes local expertise. A good friend had someone from Disney stand over his shoulder while he married up audio to video for one of the Star Wars trailers, to make sure it was immediately deleted after the work was done. Even the in-park app they use to manage wait times for people in the parks is mostly handled locally, because any problems manifest locally. Few of these people are on H1B visas. The company tends to reserve those for entertainment performers.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
The DOJ is racist! Just like anyone who criticizes the H1B program in any way!
Upvote
-8
(1
/
-9)
Upvote
-1
(0
/
-1)
That is factually false.
That is factually false. There is an indentured-worker problem, but it lies with the abhorrent permanent immigration process.
Politicians love you for distracting from the root cause of the problem. It allows them to appear to "do something" while leaving the problem intact for the next campaign promise.
That runs directly counter to what the H-1B program is actually for. H-1B is for temporary guest workers, people who come to the US as essentially longer-term business visitors.
Today, it is heavily used to bridge the gap until the permanent Green Card becomes available.
Speed up the permanent green card process to complete in a few weeks, and the problem goes away.
The general idea here is not necessarily bad (and not far from how it already works, even including a hefty five-digit surcharge - albeit payable to the government), but the real problem lies with the implementation. One of the big sticking points for both H-1B and the permanent is determining the prevailing wage.
One option might be that both H-1B and permanent positions are only available for unionized positions that have a negotiated prevailing wage.
Upvote
-2
(2
/
-4)
That is actually another problem with the permanent immigration process. The job opportunity is for, say, a junior engineer, and ten years later should have been promoted several times. But 10 years later, when the Green Card finally comes through, the employer must have the engineer in the same junior position that was originally offered, or start over (and wait another several years).
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
First of all, this is actually more complex, because if the person isn't laid off in the first ten years or so, they will likely obtain permanent status, and become eligible for unemployment benefits.
The actual number, I don't think anybody knows.
I can give you a number from a different but parallel situation that should give you a ballpark idea: undocumented workers are in the same situation (and contrary to public perception, they generally do pay taxes, and employers withhold the FICA taxes that matter here), not just with respect to unemployment, but also social security. The New York Times reported some years ago that these contributions shore up social security by approximately 7 billion dollars annually.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/...bolstering-social-security-with-billions.html
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
Should be given greencard/citizen equivalent access to social security, in-state university tuition fees, layoff == penalize the company financially, if you lose your H1B position, you have 180 days to sort out a new arrangement instead of 30 days.
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
Yes. The regulations have changed over time. To give you an idea of just how strictly monitored the process, let me explain how it worked in the not too distant past (the specific process has since changed, since it was unworkably bureaucratic, especially in an era of Internet job postings and electronic resumes, but the general intensity of the scrutiny is still similar).
This part of the process is, still today, handled by Department of Labor, not DOJ (in fact, DOJ is no longer involved at all since immigration is now part of DHS).
The regulations specified that the job had to be posted in a specific newspaper. DoL would decide which newspaper, as well as the wording of the ad, and specify the address the resumes had to be submitted to (on paper). The address was a DoL address, not the actual employer. DoL would then read each resume, forward it to the employer, and the employer had to interview every candidate, and write a document explaining why the candidate was not suitable.
The whole process took something like a year or two.
And of course, since the applications weren't on Monster.com (at the time) there were very few candidates. That's one of the reasons this particular process was eventually scrapped.
The irony here is that this is very close to the process that Apple is accused of still using today.
One of the things I recall about the more recent (and probably current) process is that it involves posting the job to the job database of the state unemployment office (EDD in California). And qualified candidates are generally required to apply for those to keep their benefits.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
A large part of the problem is tuitions. US citizens often can't afford to go to college. Meanwhile, foreign students often attend US universities (often either from wealthy foreign families, or with scholarships). End result is that a very large share of graduates even of US universities, especially with advanced degrees, is foreign.
We need to return to the free excellent public universities that trained the likes of Steve Jobs and jump-started Silicon Valley in the 1960s and 1970s.
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
That is actually specifically banned, unless the job has a bona fide business need.
Obviously, requiring fluency in foreign languages for a translator is reasonable. For a run-of-the-mill software engineer, it isn't. If the position is for manager of a factory floor, requiring a foreign language also likely won't fly even if everybody on the factory floor speaks Spanish.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
No. Correct would be "companies are allowed to hire whomever they want as long as the employees are authorized to work in the USA".
In the case at hand, we are talking about people who are not authorized to work in the USA. In that case, the employer can apply to give the person work authorization for the US, either permanently (a Green Card) or temporarily (an H type, O type, P type, and various other visas). That's the underlying principle of the immigration system.
It was supposed to be either-or (in fact, originally the H-1B specifically banned you from applying for a Green Card), and originally the Green Card process took just a few weeks, so that was workable.
The real problem is that our immigration law dates back to the 1950s and has never been adjusted for today's circumstances.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
It shouldn't have been downvoted, IMO, but that's not how the law works. The law says you must hire any American who meets the qualifications in the job description. The only exception is for university professors - universities are in fact allowed to hire the best candidate, even if there are other applicants.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
You did misunderstand. H-1B and PERM are totally separate issues. H-1B was never meant to provide a path to citizenship.
They only got conflated because the permanent process is horribly broken (and has been broken since the 1980s).
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
That is blatantly false. Some companies have tried things such as "can't live in (insert non-white neighborhood here)" or other excuses. It doesn't matter what excuse the company comes up with, if the end result is that non-white customers aren't served or non-white applicants aren't hired, it's illegal.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
That's what I meant by "adequate candidate", but thanks for that bit about universities... I had no idea they had special rules
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
I wholeheartedly agree the US needs a new immigration system that lets companies hire the talent they truly need, but where is the proof that the H1B program is keeping tech salaries down in the US? The US has some of the highest-paid and highest average-paid software engineers in the world - that is why everyone wants to work in Silicon Valley. I get there are specific cases where software teams have been replaced by foreigners, whether they be immigrants to the US or outsourced to people living in cheaper foreign countries. However, this has not put a dent in average salaries for software developers in the US over the long run.
Upvote
5
(7
/
-2)
I posted it a page ago...
https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-o...-in-2022-and-laid-off-at-least-85000-workers/
Upvote
1
(2
/
-1)
RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Some Fine. $6M goes out while the $18M sits in a trust fund. And how will they contact those that applied and didn't get jobs? With a postcard and expiration date.
Upvote
-1
(1
/
-2)
You cut out the two previous lines from posting you quoted. They referenced Java and Rust, not foreign languages.
It took some effort to cut those lines from the quote. What was the motivation?
Upvote
0
(2
/
-2)
Sadly lots of evidence they lower wages. That said anytime you have indentured servants they will get lower wages because the alternative is deportation.
https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/
It's a super abusive program for workers and a cash cow for corporations...
Upvote
0
(5
/
-5)
What makes it news is a company being held accountable. Could be a lot more cases coming.
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
30 years plus, boyo. That aside, I am truly sorry my brief missive exhausted your attention span.
OK, I'll bite.
Parsing this paragraph, you appear to be talking about your own experience as a manager as well as some gossip you heard from another company.
Per the first comment, the primary role of HR is to keep companies legal. You can often get away with putting any nonsense in a req, provided you stay legal. The era of a specialist HR that hires directly based on some mystical understanding of the personnel requirements of an organization is far behind us.
Your second comment is absurd, and certainly does not apply to most companies.
I will concede the major change in hiring practices over the last 20 years is that managers are increasingly risk averse, especially in larger companies, and especially if they are not subject matter experts. This results in multi-tiered rounds of interviews, where the manager passes his responsibility on to the members of the team and then makes a "decision" based on the consensus. This tortuous, worthless process leads to all other problems, like hazing-vetting panel interviews ("cite some trivia!") or even worthless interview questions which can lead to legal hot water ("how would you handle this" instead of "provide an example of how you handled this sort of situation".
I was obviously referring more to Disney's H1B scandal, which dealt with inward-focused IT systems, but perhaps that was before you graduated from high school.
I have no knowledge or, really, any interest in the plethora of software development that Disney engages in for its media products, but from articles on Ars, it appears they and Marvel outsource a shit ton, worldwide, with variable results, depending on the company and the importance of the project to Disney.
Upvote
-1
(2
/
-3)
They aren't hiring foreigners because foreigners can do the job better. It's because you can get away with paying a lot less and abusing workers a lot more if they know they'll be deported if you fire them.
Upvote
-1
(3
/
-4)
It's an attempt to drive down labor costs and chain employees to the company.
That is a feature, not a bug.
Upvote
3
(5
/
-2)
Exactly, it seems that a lot of the commenters aren't aware of the power dynamics the employer has over the H1-B workers and how abusive it is.
The employer isn't JUST threatening to fire you, they are threatening to DEPORT YOU within 60 days of your termination.
Upvote
4
(6
/
-2)
Well we were seeing job reqs for Tamil and Nepalese before the ban must have happened.
Its not hard to find literal body shops where most of the staff aren't just foreign but from a very particular part of a foreign country. They even speak their local language as an everyday language.
Did Ars cover the company that asked for only white people for a particular job? Got to find out they literally had no white or Hispanic people in Texas. Yes Texas.
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
Upvote
-5
(0
/
-5)
aside those 'qualifications', its refreshing to have foreign folks to enrich the cultural poverty that reigns deeply embedded in the minds of the locals, and it makes the employer seem to have global integration to add to the glowing reputation of the heads of the universities/corporate memoirs.
its not about the money after all, with global interests to 'friend' with, and dismissing all barriers that provide opportunity for the betterment of mankind.....
(i'm practicing my strategy scripts for my ignoble BS degree.)
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
Apple’s revenue in the 4th quarter alone (3rd calendar quarter) of 2023 was $89.5 billion, $23 billion in pure profit. A fine of $25 million is implicit encouragement. If Apple (and other tech companies) want to hire foreign workers instead of American workers then maybe these companies should be forced to headquarter in Russia, China, or India? Absolutely traitorous. F**k the DOJ as well.
Upvote
-2
(0
/
-2)
They are related now though. H-1B is the most common way people move to employment based green cards (often after originally graduating from an American school).
The PERM process is necessary for converting an H-1B to a green card and is just completely broken and requires you to post a job listing for the job that the H-1B you're sponsoring is already doing. It's just obviously stupid because if you could hire an American easily to do the same job you wouldn't bother spending years and tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees trying to sponsor the worker, especially since they are free to take any job once it's complete. It's also unfair to the Americans you are required to interview as part of the process, the company is required to interview a certain number of people it knows they are never going to hire so it's just wasting people's time.
Upvote
0
(2
/
-2)
First of all, this doesn't address the fact that not every illegal immigrant buys a fake ID package. Some work under the table with the complicity of their employer and don't need it. And it's irrelevant anyway because we are talking about legal immigration here, and legal immigrants always pay social security.
But this doesn't address the issue I raised: Why not hire the unemployed locals first? There is a financial and societal cost to unemployment. Why not hire the unemployed locals first and have them contribute to social security exactly what a foreign worker would (which is what happens by law btw) AND avoid the financial cost of unemployment to the government and societal cost to society?
Upvote
-2
(2
/
-4)
Why doesn’t (or didn’t) your company replace you with someone unemployed they found on the street?
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
A lot of people seem to be jumping on the H1B or Apple band bashing without reading all the comments. To be fair, the article doesn’t really seem to explain why Apple may have behaved this way as the fairest option they had.
Upvote
1
(2
/
-1)
Apple is just one of very many American companies, from large to small, in IT that hires offshore or hires H1-B instead of Americans.
The benefit of doing this is purely short-term financial to improve quarterly reports. The effect on productivity and software quality takes at least a year, generally, to become apparent. In the meantime, non-technical management gets their bonuses from the reduced overhead, and as things head south, those short-term financial gains becoming long-term financial losses, they jump ship to the next victim, touting their "success" at the last company.
I have witnessed this from the inside at three companies over the past many years. One company lost a lot of its value and was bought cheap for its remaining customer base - and then, once stripped of them, sold to another company. Another company floundered so badly that they turned to some "gray areas" to sustain business and are now in deep legal trouble at the federal level. The third company is still in its first year of offshoring, and it is not looking good.
American software engineers and other IT workers do cost more than offshore labor or H1-B labor, and not trivially. It is a lack of good management that has led some companies to hire lesser-skilled and lesser-knowledgeable American workers to save expenses, which means hiring more of them and costing a lot more in the latter half of the SDLC. Good IT management means hiring fewer Americans, but better qualified and experienced ones. For example, I know from experience, that a smartly managed team of 10 well-qualified American software engineers will produce better quality software at a lower total SDLC cost than a team of 20 H1-B or offshored software engineers. Having worked on the hardware side and the network side also, I know that principle is true in that part of IT, also.
I am sure many will disagree. But having seen this play out in real life and understanding how and why this happens, I believe this is the rational, logical conclusion.
- Some companies have laid off American software engineers and moved their development offshore.
- Other companies have laid off American software engineers and hired H1-B visa holders.
- Yet others have laid off their American software engineers and outsource to an ostensibly American consulting company, but knowing they mostly hire H1-B workers or offshore to provide a lower cost to the development portion of the SDLC.
The benefit of doing this is purely short-term financial to improve quarterly reports. The effect on productivity and software quality takes at least a year, generally, to become apparent. In the meantime, non-technical management gets their bonuses from the reduced overhead, and as things head south, those short-term financial gains becoming long-term financial losses, they jump ship to the next victim, touting their "success" at the last company.
I have witnessed this from the inside at three companies over the past many years. One company lost a lot of its value and was bought cheap for its remaining customer base - and then, once stripped of them, sold to another company. Another company floundered so badly that they turned to some "gray areas" to sustain business and are now in deep legal trouble at the federal level. The third company is still in its first year of offshoring, and it is not looking good.
American software engineers and other IT workers do cost more than offshore labor or H1-B labor, and not trivially. It is a lack of good management that has led some companies to hire lesser-skilled and lesser-knowledgeable American workers to save expenses, which means hiring more of them and costing a lot more in the latter half of the SDLC. Good IT management means hiring fewer Americans, but better qualified and experienced ones. For example, I know from experience, that a smartly managed team of 10 well-qualified American software engineers will produce better quality software at a lower total SDLC cost than a team of 20 H1-B or offshored software engineers. Having worked on the hardware side and the network side also, I know that principle is true in that part of IT, also.
I am sure many will disagree. But having seen this play out in real life and understanding how and why this happens, I believe this is the rational, logical conclusion.
Upvote
1
(3
/
-2)
Good observation.
The typical approach to be able to tell the Feds that "we can't find qualified workers" (so as to justify hiring H1-Bs), is: 1) to advertise requirements above what is actually needed; and 2) offer salaries/rates noticeably lower than the market for American workers.
When no "qualified" American workers are hired (or even apply) under those conditions, then the company can legally hire H1-B workers, at lower qualifications and lower compensation.
And once an H1-B visa holder is hired, they can't just quit like an American citizen can, lest they lose their visa when they don't get another job.
Upvote
1
(3
/
-2)
Right or wrong, American's 401k's depend on it. I, and many others, would like to retire someday.
Upvote
-2
(0
/
-2)
Since retirement investing is as long-term game, 401Ks are not helped in the long term when IT jobs are given to H1-B visa holders or outsourced when better qualified Americans are available. The full, long-term cost of the SDLC or product life cycle typically increases over the use of H1-B labor or offshoring, thus reducing profits.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)