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How-Not-to-Hire-U.S.-Workers Law Firm Fires Back
theodp writes "Congress is now calling for a Dept. of Labor investigation into a Pittsburgh law firm after a video showing its attorneys advising employers how to game the immigration system was posted on YouTube. Cohen & Grigsby, the firm in question, issued a statement insisting their statements were commandeered and misused, but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety. Cohen & Grigsby has also been advising employers since 2002 that they have nothing to fear if they keep employees in the dark about the existence of DOL-required H-1B Public Access Files."
has the tag line 'progressive law' all over the place. I would suggest replacing the word 'progressive' with 'breakin' the'
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
If you are going to evade the spirit of the law, don't be surprised when the lawmakers take note.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This entire system is broken and should be scrapped. The government simply cannot enforce the restrictions in place. The H-1B is supposed to be a temp visa for positions that can't be filled domestically, but I see very few people using it that way. The sponsoring companies are using it as a means to keep labor costs down, and the visa holders seem to mostly be using it as a stepping stone to citizenship(the ones I know are). You should just accept this and roll the visa into a citizen-track visa, make it easy for visa holders to bring their families, make it easy for them to switch jobs, and then they won't have to worry about getting booted out of the country if they lose their job.
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Talk to ANYBODY who has got a green card thru their company (assuming they were reasonably cognisent of the process) and you will discover the same thing - this is standard operating procedure, and not just an abuse by this specific law firm.
The way the system is set up, how can it be any other way... if a company has decided they want to get someone a green card, then of course they do whatever they can to achieve that. If they instead wanted to replace the person with a US worker then they'd be doing an honest job search, and NOT pursing a green card. Duh! The law says you have to advertize the job, so you put an ad for the job in the most obscure paper possible, with the job requirements so custom tailored to the person you are trying to get a green card for that no one else can qualify. I'm sure it works better than ever in recent years now that most people expect to find job openings online rather than in the local paper.
What's lame here is Congress pretending to give a crap (presumably just because this particular story/video has hit the press) and wanting to investigate this particular law firm. One has to wonder are they being investigated for breaking the law, or rather just for making Congress look bad by openly flaunting the law? If Congress really gave a crap they'd fix the broken system rather than go after a law firm doing nothing different than every other law firm hired to assist in this process.
I have no reason to doubt that these lawyers keep their clients within the law, however much they might "game the system." That, after all, is why you hire a lawyer.
The job of the lawyer is to know the law inside out so that they can assist their client. The job of the legislator is to draft laws and regulations that have as few loopholes and weaknesses as possible.
If blame is to be assigned, it goes to the lawmakers.
Honestly though I suspect that most companies paying for this kind of advice are probably fooling themselves. Between the falling U.S. dollar, legal costs, and the inefficiencies associated with training and replacing short term or contract employees they likely aren't saving enough money to make it worthwhile.
Just because it looks cheap doesn't mean it really saves you money.
Three Squirrels
Yeah. I'm sure the wrist-slapping will be unparalleled in human history.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
What the lawyer is talking about is a green card application, usually for someone who has already worked many years at a company and lived and paid taxes in the US. There is a formal requirement that the company post a job ad. Of course, companies don't want any applicants for that job ad: they already have someone for that job that they have invested a lot of time and money in. Do you seriously think they are going to send that guy home based on someone who sends in a resume? And companies are likely paying that guy competitively because once they get the green card, he could leave immediately.
I've seen these requirements for formal job postings in non-immigration contexts as well, and they never work. If finding qualified, good applicants were as simple as posting a job ad and collecting resumes, headhunters and hiring bounties would be such a booming business.
How are Americans more entitled to an American job from an American company that gets American tax breaks and largely serves the American consumer-base? Hmm.. Gee, I don't know. And don't you dare act like every other country isn't extremely protectionist of their jobs and workforce.
Further, capitalism is fine. However, while the average corporation can seek out labor all over the planet and simply put up an office or hire workers from the cheapest areas, the American citizen does not have such a pool to choose from - neither in terms of employment or cost of living.
A corporation can pick from the entire planet and decide to invest in an area where they can pay experienced professionals as much in salary as the average American citizen pays in rent. While the corporation and the American citizen may be based in America, the corporation is not constrained by the dynamics, labor supply and financial situation of this country. The worker, however, is. We don't have a choice. Milk is about $3.85 per gallon. Period. I can't go somewhere and buy it for a nickel a gallon. And if you want to live close enough to these corporations to work for them, you're usually looking at more expensive living. You will pay $800 or $1,000 or $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment or half a million bucks for a small house. Period. Unless you plan on commuting 1500 miles from some hill in the midwest out to the west coast every morning.
Then, to add insult to injury, this shoddy form of sham-capitalism isn't enough for them. They want to compound it by telling us that Americans are not plentiful enough or educated enough. Now, if there is a shortage of milk or gas, I have to pay more money for it. If there is a shortage of experienced labor in this country, corporations simply artificially adjust the value of these workers by lobbying government to let them bring in more employees from overseas or to simply move a chunk of their own operations overseas.
People try to suggest that Americans are racist or xenophobic when all they are doing is showing concern for their well-being and their careers. They have a right to do so. Especially when - on top of the imbalanced system - we have underhanded corporations and services as in this article working to drill us even further into the ground.
The argument, though, is that since the law states the employer must make a "good faith effort" to find a qualified US worker that they ARE breaking the letter of the law. When the whole objective of the process is to go through the motions with the end goal of not finding a qualified US worker (i.e. "we're going to make it look like you're looking for qualified applicants even though you have absolutely no plan of hiring a US worker"), it seems to me any rational person would not consider this a good faith effort.