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Comment by bubblethink | Hacker News Reader

The cases where the government has proved in a court of law that a company is in violation of the statute or regulation. I am not aware of any successful prosecutions here other than maybe Cognizant which was in the news some time ago.

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What prosecutions of the 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(5)(A)(i) do you mean? It's a clause that says that aliens looking for a job are inadmissible unless there are no qualified, willing and available workers as certified by DOL. It is not prosecuted, aliens are just not admitted. But if you have seen it being prosecuted somehow I am still waiting for a link.

PERM is approved at a rate in high 90s. The government - this government - has approved PERM for all these corporations that it is slandering now. Here's a deposition from a DOL employee [1]:

"Q Are any PERMs denied for fraud? A Not to my knowledge."

There is a PERM process, the government overwhelmingly approves it, it does not take anything to court or win. I am not sure what you are trying to argue.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.266...

You are not giving the links to the prosecutions you claimed the government lost.

I am claiming the government does not prosecute them or deny their PERM. What are you arguing? Can you state it clearly?

You claimed that government does not successfully prosecute this, implying it prosecutes and fails. If you wanted to say it does not prosecute then you should just said so when I asked what prosecution did you mean. Also what are you arguing here? We both agree that inadmissibility does not require prosecution, so what's your point again?

No, I never implied that they fail. They do not prosecute or deny any PERM certifications. PERM is anyway not tied to inadmissibility of an alien as PERM is an employer driven certification process. Recall that PERM is administered by the Dept. of Labor. Specifically for PERM, they need to prove in a court of law that the company is violating civil rights, labor laws, discriminating against a protected class, doing fraud, etc. They do not do that at the administrative level (by denying PERM) or at the judicial level (by winning a court case). All they do is make speeches on the campaign trail, and occasionally settle out of court as some other sibling comments' examples in Apple, META, etc. show.

Okay, then I read you reply wrong and have no idea what are you trying to say. The law I quoted is about inadmissibility, PERM is a process to create an exception for an inadmissible alien as described in the law. Recall that the exception is created via DOL certifying that there are no sufficient able, qualified, willing and available workers. PERM is a way to conduct this certification. Read my first message you have responded, it has the link to the law. I am also not sure what you mean by this "They do not do that at the administrative level (by denying PERM) " because the news item you are commenting under is exactly about the blanket PERM denial.

Yes, the present blanket ban is unlawful which will be overturned by the courts as arbitrary and capricious (similar to tariffs, 100k fee, and countless other things that this admin has done). I mean that historically PERM approval rates have been above 90%.

That's, like, your opinion, dude. For what it's worth, these bans are routine and had been issued many times before, none was declared "unlawful" by an actual court, nor it had been overturned. Usually what takes for the ban to be lifted is the company getting into compliance with the law and stopping the cute "nobody told us we should not ad in the Podunk Monthly Herald, we honestly thought this is the best place to source PMs!".

This is just textbook APA stuff. There is no such thing as a legal blanket ban. The executive does not have the authority to do any of this. And I will bet my money that MS has been following the law. Hopium and copium are free though, so I can't stop you from smoking it. The most likely outcome here is again a settlement after the midterms and some money thrown at Trump or Vance.

I believe you need to get a better textbook. The debarment program started in 2007 [1]

1. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/05/17/E7-9250...

And the APA passed in 1946. What you are pointing to is regulation. And Chevron was overturned recently. There is no jurisdiction review bar for PERM. I am willing to bet actual money that MS will win at trial or it will be settled out of court like everything else.

Again, I am not following, are you now saying that the debarment list for PERM does not exist or it's unlawful and will be overturned by courts any moment now, 19 years later? Well, as you said, nobody is going to debar you from smoking hopium and copium.

The present unilateral action of banning MS from using PERM is unlawful as MS hasn't broken any laws. (PERM has its own cooldown mechanism of timeouts after layoffs. I'm not talking about those.) If the US government bars MS on any grounds of fraud, abuse, misrepresentation, etc., or if the US government tries to claim that they have the power to unilaterally ban PERM for MS, they will lose in court or settle. We can revisit this in a few months.

Good, now you went from the "There is no such thing as a legal blanket ban. The executive does not have the authority to do any of this." to "MS will settle". It sure will, as all other targets of this action.

Courts deal with live controversies, they do not rule on abstract things. So, if the case moves to trial, the court will rule that there is no such thing as a legal blanket ban as enacted here. As for settling, you can go back to the top of the thread where I claim that there is no successful prosecution. If you think that is a win, more power to you. I get the feeling that we have been in agreement the whole time. Make noise -> shakedown -> press release -> settle is what happens always. I count that as 'no successful prosecution', and you count that as a win.

You keep saying "case", "trial" as if there is an actual lawsuit or indictment being discussed here. Has MS lodged a lawsuit? If so, I'd love to see it and if not - what are you talking about?

Ya, dude, it takes time. Are you unfamiliar with how federal litigation works? So far we have a tweet from the government. They need to put whatever they have concocted in writing and send it to MS. Then MS will file a complaint that shows injury. Or they'll negotiate a settlement even before it goes to trial. And so on. Like I said, we shall revisit in a few months once the dust settles.

So, in other words, no lawsuit, no indictment? Color me unsurprised.

Yes, you won.

> "Q Are any PERMs denied for fraud? A Not to my knowledge."

This is misleading. "Fraud" is a legal term, and it's difficult to prove. However, DoL can and will do an audit to verify that the PERM application is correct. If the audit fails (and they fail them often) they just deny the petition.

But they don't deny them. PERM is approved > 90%. Google for PERM stats.

Well, yes. That's because the majority of PERMs are well-documented. It costs a lot to go through the process, so companies don't bother with weak applications.

I'm confused then. What are you trying to say? I am claiming that there is no meaningful fraud, misrepresentation, or abuse; everything is happening by the books with > 90% approval; things are working as designed and present theatre is political theatre for midterms.

No, I'm claiming that PERM is fraud-free because it happens so rarely. And DoL routinely audits and denies bad applications.

It's not a large percentage, but nowhere near the "never heard about DoL denying a petition" level.

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