Posted on 03/01/2025 1:15:33 PM PST by NobleFree
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly favouring foreign workers over American citizens in its hiring practices. A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the lawsuit, which claims Meta prefers H-1B visa holders because they can be paid less, must proceed.
The lawsuit was filed by three U.S. citizens—Purushothaman Rajaram, an IT worker; Ekta Bhatia, a software engineer; and Qun Wang, a data scientist. They allege that they applied for multiple positions at Meta between 2020 and 2024 but were not hired despite being qualified. They argue that Meta systematically prefers foreign visa holders over American citizens.
Meta has denied these allegations, stating there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against American workers. However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler highlighted statistics showing that 15% of Meta's U.S. workforce are H-1B visa holders, compared to 0.5% of the overall U.S. workforce.
The judge also referred to a previous case in October 2021, where Meta agreed to a settlement of up to $14.25 million over similar accusations of favouring temporary visa holders over American workers.
The lawsuit was initially dismissed in November 2022 when only Rajaram was involved, but a federal appeals court revived it in June 2023. The court ruled that the claims were valid under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits discrimination based on nationality or citizenship status.
The case, Rajaram et al. v. Meta Platforms Inc., will now proceed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. If successful, it could affect how Meta and other tech companies hire, particularly regarding H-1B visa workers.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Daniel Low, expressed hope that the lawsuit would reduce the tech industry's preference for visa workers, although he acknowledged that new laws or stronger enforcement might be necessary to fully address the issue. Meta and its legal team have yet to respond to the latest court ruling.
H1B visas should cost the hiring company $1 million each, paid to state’s education department.
Fixed. U. S. workers get the jobs (if they work equally well without DEI demands).
H1-b visas should be sold for 1 million dollars a year and if a qualified US citizen had applied for the job and was turned down, the H1-b person would immediately be fired and the US citizen hired with back pay.
Sorry, but why would you pay foreigners more than US citizens for the same job?
H1-B laws clearly state that a position MUST go to a US Citizen, unless there are NO qualified US Citizens for the role. In that case, an H1-B Visa holder can be used.
https://cis.org/Miano/Primer-Reporters-Looking-H1B-Program
Pettifoggers will tell you that H-1B workers are required to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or the wage paid to similar workers. And golly gee willikers, it says just that right at the top of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(n)(1). That’s enough information for the willful ignorami writing the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
But scroll down to 8 U.S.C. § 1101(p)(4). There you will find that the Department of Labor is required to take an existing wage survey and divide it into four skill level prevailing wages. Notice there is no requirement that the employer pay the H-1B worker at his skill level. Even if there were such a requirement, it would be unenforceable because skill is a subjective measure..
Under the current law an employer may replace an American with an H-1B worker unless:
The H-1B worker is paid less than $60,000; and
The H-1B worker does not have a graduate degree; and
The employer has more than 15 percent of its total employees on H-1B visas earning less than $60,000 and not having graduate degrees; and
The replacement takes place within 90 days of making the visa petition.
You have to navigate through two levels of misdirection in the code to piece all this together. Congress went to a lot of effort to ensure employers can replace Americans and to hide that fact from the casual reader of the code.
Which means nothing if the law isn't followed.
I know young white guys who are desperately looking for work but can't get hired because they're white and male.
And they know it.
Careful. Don’t pizz the ai off.
As American as Szechuan curry.
But if I have to explain the supply/demand graphics up to you when common sense ought to be enough, that in itself is a good reason to hire a knowledgeable H-1B to replace you. Hm?
Exactly. We all know it's not followed in the least most of the time.
It explains why the H1-B holders are getting cookie-cutter Master’s degrees that are meaningless.
In addition, employers should be required to pay 125% of prevailing wages for an H1B visa holder rather than the 30 - 40 percent they currently pay.
Thank you.
Why would you give money to the states’ least competent departments?
We need competent STEM people. How would you suggest we develop our own?
To start, get common core math (which is even worse than common core English) out of our schools. Next, get phones and other tech out of the schools. Then have rigorous classes through college, which we don’t have now. Go back to physical books only. Also, get the international grad students and hard-to-understand instructors out of our college STEM departments. End the H1B program and send those workers home.
And let the market go from there. But it is a matter of getting bad resources out, rather than throwing money at the problem, that is needed.
Someone take this to Caremark/CVS, who just outsourced all their IT to an Indian firm.
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