Hacker News Reader

Comment by winter_blue | Hacker News Reader

> If you're applying for a junior role and you're earning above the median you'll be in the clear. If you're applying for a senior role you'll need to be above the 90th percentile

Couldn't a company just re-designate a senior role as a junior role, and pay a person with lots of experience coming from abroad a junior person's wage (which probably is still a lot more than what they made in their previous country of residence)?

View on HN

With H1B you need to prove that you are unable to hire anyone from the US for the given position, including actually having to show that you have interviewed candidates and had a job listing up. Alongside having to pay a salary thats above the market average for the position.

> need to prove that you are unable to hire anyone from the US for the given position, including actually having to show that you have interviewed candidates and had a job listing up

This requirement is called “labor certification”, and it only applies to the EB-2 and EB-3 “immigrant visas” (ie green cards).

There is no labor certification requirement for the H-1B.

The prevailing wage requirement applies to both the H-1B as well as the EB-2 and EB-3.

Not for H1Bs. This is a popular misconception. You can hire an H1B as long as you're paying above prevailing wage for that job as set by DOL.

so you tailor your listing accordingly so that only one person in the world is qualified, and that person happens to be who you wanted to hire

Super easy to go around. Just make the posting tailored to your specific candidate: “a mechanical engineer, 15 years of experience with solidworks and fluent in English, Russian and Hebrew. Must be willing to relocate to Knoxville, TN”. I guarantee you’ll find zero people in eastern TN who fit that description.

Green card. Not H-1B.

I haven't found the actual rule wording yet, but if it's tied to role rather than experience then yes this is a loophole that's likely to be used.

Role, but you’d have a harder problem arguing for something to be hard to hire for if it’s junior and above market rate

Absolutely, and that could be a fig leaf that many companies will use as cover, that won't hold under any inspection, when you can expect big penalties.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com