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U.S. citizens only policy in hiring is illegal.

 
Greenhorn
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Please dont support web sites and job advertisements which ask for US citizenship status(unless it is a federal or state job which requires citizenship)
Please report job advertisements which say - US citizens only need apply to
Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices
P.O. Box 27728
Washington, DC 20038-7728
For more information, call the OSC Employer Hotline at 800-255-8155 (toll free); TDD: 800-362-2735. For questions about Title VII, please contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at 800-669-4000 (toll free) or 202-275-7518 (TDD) or visit their website.

From the US Law website
http://www.uslaw.com/library/article/article_182.html
"
Establish a policy of hiring only individuals who are authorized to work. A "U.S. citizens only" policy in hiring is illegal. An employer may require U.S. citizenship for a particular job only if it is required by federal, state, or local law, or by government contract"
 
Ranch Hand
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I suspect that, ironically, employers who do this actually have no intention to hire a US citizen.
When a company wants to bring in new H1-B's (to pay lower wages and save some money), they must show that they could not find someone with those skills already here. Running an ad that says US citizens only could be a foolish way of them demonstrating that they needed H1-B's...(they of course delete any qualifying resumes upon receipt).
Just a hunch.
 
Sach Baat
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Originally posted by John Fontana:
I suspect that, ironically, employers who do this actually have no intention to hire a US citizen.
Just a hunch.


This is not true.Some recruiters have asked me about my citizenship status and immediately ended the call once I told them ,Iam not a citizen. H1bs have nothing to do with this.
Just do a search on Dice or Monster. You will find a lot of jobs which say - only american citizens need apply.Also some sites like hireamericancitizens.org promote this.
This is clearly illegal and I urge all responsible people to report such advertsements.
 
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To the best of my knowledge not choosing to hire H1-B visas is not illegal.
Here's what I found. Please note that all web sites are goverment web sites, whereas the one Sach posted is not. (Nothing personal Sach, I'm just attacking your evidence.)
The claim about citizenship discrimination seems to come from IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986. Two things hould be noted. First citizenship discrimination is different then discrimination based on national origin. Second, this act was passed with the thought of farm workers in mind.
I base the above from
http://www2.state.id.us/ihrc/RACEBRO.htm and
http://www.usda.gov/agency/oce/oce/labor-affairs/ircasumm.htm
The former even goes so far as to note:


However, the laws enforced by the IHRC do not protect an individual who believes that he/she has been discriminated against because of the particular citizenship held: U.S. citizen or citizen of another country.


Of course, the former is only a state site, and this is technically a federal law.
Reading the DOJ web site at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/osc/htm/911discrimwrkr.htm we find



What is Citizenship Status Discrimination?
Citizenship status discrimination occurs when individuals are not hired or are fired because of their real or perceived immigration or citizenship status, or because of their type of work authorization. U.S. citizens, refugees, asylees, many permanent residents and certain temporary residents are protected from citizenship status discrimination. U.S. citizen-only hiring policies are generally unlawful. Employers may not refuse to hire refugees or asylees because their work authorization documents have expiration dates.
Examples of citizenship status discrimination:
* An employer posts a sign that states, "We hire Americans only." An employer refuses to hire a job applicant because he or she does not look like an "American citizen."
* An employer fires employees who are not U.S. citizens or who appear "foreign."
* An employer refuses to hire an applicant because he or she is a refugee or asylee and the employer wants to hire U.S. citizens only.


OK, so that lists: "U.S. citizens, refugees, asylees, many permanent residents and certain temporary residents." H1-B do not fall into the first four categories, so that leaves "certain temporary residents."
This is where you need a lot more time then I have to read through the laws. I looked at the DOJ's immigration discrimination page at http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/discrimination/immdisc.htm It noted:



The Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits employers (when hiring, discharging, or recruiting or referring for a fee) from discriminating because of national origin against U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and authorized aliens or discriminating because of citizenship status against U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and the following classes of a aliens with work authorization: permanent residents, temporary residents (that is, individuals who have gone through the legalization program), refugees, and asylees.


I tried the office of special counsel for immigration issues at the DOJ at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/osc/ Unfortunately it only describes "Temporary Protected Status," which is unrelated to H1-B.
I continued my search under the DOJ and also the Dept. of Labor, trying to find out what the legalization process is. On the DOJ web site, I found information on the "Immigration and Nationality Act" at http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/lawsregs/INA.htm If you follow the links from there you find the laws listed at http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/legishist/index.htm but this basically lists all the laws. I can't read them all. From skimming through some of them, it looks like illegal aliens and some other quasi-legal people in the US have been legalized at various times. I believe this is what the law is referring to. This view is further supported by a Dept. of Labor web site at http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/agworker/report/ch4.htm Specifically,


n 1987 and 1988, more than one million foreigners who listed their occupation as farm worker applied for legalization under the Special Agricultural Workers and the General Amnesty program .2 Most of these individuals spent two to four years as Temporary Residents, and then the vast majority of them obtained Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status, mostly in the 1990 to 1992 period.
...
The first categorization highlights the growth of the Legal Permanent Resident group (those who hold "green cards"), as the IRCA applicants and their relatives converted to Legal Permanent Resident status.



Bottom line, I see no evidence that refusing to hire an H1-B is illegal. Besides, if you're supposed to post a job for a specified number of months and show evidence that you need to hire the H1-B only when you cannot fill the job when a US citizen is unavailable, it seems to me, the system was designed to bias it against the H1-B.
--Mark
 
Sach Baat
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"Bottom line, I see no evidence that refusing to hire an H1-B is illegal"
I agree, refusing to hire a H1b is not illegal.I was talking about ads which say - only US citizens.
Mark I was talking about permanent residents. Again H1Bs who have cleared the labour process( final stage of GC) are legally authorized to work for any employer, though they are still on H1b's.
I had recently read an interview with a government employee, where he had urged people to report such cases.
I will post the interview when I find it.
 
Sheriff
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This most often has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination. I can't speak about other parts of the country, but in the DC/MD/VA area, this is commonly listed in job ads, since most of the IT work here somehow falls into the government sector. What it means is that the company placing the ad is probably a government contractor whose people are subject to some kind of security regulations if they want to do any work on these government contracts. We figured this out quickly when we moved to the area and my wife had landed a job as a government contractor at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (of course then she quit after awhile and went into the financial sector where the pay was better ).
So this isn't illegal discrimination, but a government requirement. I'm certain that most of these companies would like to hire anybody they wanted if they could.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Sach Baat:
I agree, refusing to hire a H1b is not illegal.I was talking about ads which say - only US citizens.


Some are, as others have noted, specified by the government, for obvious reasons. As for the others, I suspect most of these, if not all of them, are more a case of a poor choice of words. I suspect you will find that they really meant "no H1-Bs." I doubt these companies really object hiring permanent residents, green card holders, etc. To the bets of my knowledge the paperwork and hoops to jump through for such people are hardly different then for those of US citizens, whereas for H1-Bs, there is quite a lot of effort.
While the wording may be bad, personally, I'm not seeing this is a major epidemic. (Can you show me reason I should be concerned.)
--Mark
 
Ranch Hand
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Does Sach Baat translate to English? What does it translate to?
 
Greenhorn
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My wife is a legal Alien with all the proper papers and my company which has about 20 foreigners working there at least 5 years now refuses to hire my wife. They told me right to my face that we don't hire people with green cards, I ask what about all the ones here already and their reply, I don't know anything about that. Sounds like they have filed their government quota and refuse to hire anymore.
 
Marshal
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Welcome to the Ranch
I am not legally qualified nor are most of the other people here, so we probably cannot say whether she has been unlawfully discriminated against.
 
Sheriff
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Thomas Duncan wrote:My wife is a legal Alien with all the proper papers and my company which has about 20 foreigners working there at least 5 years now refuses to hire my wife. They told me right to my face that we don't hire people with green cards, I ask what about all the ones here already and their reply, I don't know anything about that. Sounds like they have filed their government quota and refuse to hire anymore.


FWIW, that does sound discriminatory to me. To Campbell's point though, most of us here are unqualified to give advice on legal matters so your best option would be to consult a lawyer.
 
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.
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