The government requires employers to prove they looked for American workers first. So the companies have to advertise the job. But the lawyer tells them they don't have to advertise it too conspicuously.
"Our goal is, clearly, not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker," the lawyer in the video says. He later adds, "We're going to find a place where ... we're complying with the law and hoping — and likely — not to find qualified and interested worker applicants."
Immigration law firms do this all the time: They show employers how to recruit Americans without actually having to hire them. This lawyer didn't want to talk to NPR, maybe because anti-visa activists have been sending this video around for years. It's Exhibit A in their argument that recruiting rules are a sham.
In the parts of the country where tech companies are prevalent, this kind of "faux recruiting" is common knowledge. But people in the industry quickly learn not to waste their time on certain job listings, says Orion Hughes, a software tester.
"A lot of us are aware of that ruse," he says.
Hughes and others avoid the listings with overly specific requirements, such as the number of years in "the job offered." That often means the employer just wants to make permanent a temporary foreign worker who's already in the job. And if you're stubborn enough to apply anyway, Hughes says that interview is going to be awkward.
"If you want to put yourself in that manager's shoes, it's an uncomfortable situation for them," he says. "They will [have a] kind of a sour facial expression, and they'll go from one question to the next. They are finding some reason to exclude you."
