Recently, over the past few months, tech companies like OpenAI and Instacart have been placing recruitment advertisements in the San Francisco Chronicle, urging job seekers to send their resumes to the companies’ immigration or “global mobility” departments. This has raised suspicions that their recruitment efforts are deliberately targeting immigrant workers and circumventing American citizens.
According to the Department of Labor regulations, job positions and information must be publicly advertised, including being published in at least two major Sunday newspapers. Employers are also required to post job recruitment information on state labor agency websites, internal company platforms, and two other chosen advertising methods to reach both American-born workers (including permanent residents) and foreign workers.
The development team of the Jobs.Now website told News Weekly that “Americans are not aware that in their own country, simply because they are Americans, major companies often discriminate against them.” The website searches for H-1B positions and shares them with Americans.
They stated, “The unemployment rate among recent college graduates is rapidly increasing, so we must point out the recruitment discrimination that could continue to keep Americans unemployed.”
In the advertisements seen in the San Francisco Chronicle by News Weekly, OpenAI stated it is recruiting a software engineer and urges applicants to send resumes to the “global mobility team.” Instacart is also hiring for multiple positions, with applications being accepted by similar departments. Online learning platform Udemy is hiring a marketing analytics and data science lead, encouraging applicants to send resumes to the immigration department email address [email protected].
The Jobs.Now website mentioned that aside from requesting application materials to be sent to the immigration or global mobility departments, the limited options of submitting applications only by mail or email suggests that the recruitment process for these positions is separate from the company’s standard hiring procedures. This unconventional recruitment method may attract fewer applicants compared to ads posted on company job boards or mainstream job sites like LinkedIn.
Although there is currently no official requirement for companies to advertise job vacancies to local American job seekers before recruiting H-1B employees, there are related provisions in the PERM process (when companies sponsor immigrants for green cards). At this stage, companies must conduct labor market tests and prove to the Department of Labor that they cannot find suitable American workers to fill the position, and existing H-1B holders are crucial for the job.
Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida focusing on immigration issues, told News Weekly, “At this stage, most employers have already identified a foreign employee with an H-1B visa working for them and are hoping to sponsor them for a green card, so now they have to test the labor market.”
The Jobs.Now team believes that employers are abusing regulations – requiring ads to be placed in local newspapers but not necessarily online – to manipulate results in their favor. This practice is likely to exacerbate the debate over the status of the H-1B visa in the US immigration system.
While the Biden administration’s Department of Justice reached milestone settlement agreements with Facebook in 2021, and with Apple in 2023 over their advertising practices, this situation persists.
At the end of July, Federal Representatives Tom Tiffany (Republican, Wisconsin) and Andrew Clyde (Republican, Georgia) introduced a bill to tighten restrictions on the number of H-1B visas, emphasizing that American workers should take precedence over foreign workers.
Jobs.Now stated that in recent months, more and more people have begun to pay attention to this issue. They said, “Our users tell us they have been unfairly overlooked and are seeking help from the Department of Justice’s Employment Rights Division.” They added, “We hope the government will take action soon to end these illegal practices and protect American workers from discrimination.”