The Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply

A mysterious new job listings website recently went live, solely showing roles companies want to offer to their H-1B holders seeking Green Cards in an attempt to get Americans into the jobs instead.

Jobs.Now works by scouring corporate listings for positions attached to foreign workers, which employers are obliged to try to fill with American workers before seeking permanent residency for an immigrant employee.

“Many people have complained about the trend of companies recruiting immigrants to fill jobs while Americans face unemployment, but few people have taken action to provide resources to help Americans get the first look they are legally entitled to for jobs in their own country,” the team behind the website, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Newsweek Friday.

“We see Jobs.Now as a way to give back to society and our country in a meaningful way by helping smart, qualified people provide for themselves and their families.”

The H-1B to Green Card Pathway

While just one of many employment-based visas, the H-1B has become a flashpoint in the national immigration debate. Those with a more nationalist viewpoint see the program favoring foreign labor, while the big tech, medical and education sectors that dominate the visa category typically argue that foreigners offer skills they can’t match with U.S. candidates.

Both President Trump and Elon Musk have come out in favor of the H-1B system, a rare break with the MAGA movement that remains in stark opposition.

Jobs.Now targets a specific stage of the H-1B employment-based visa process: If an employer wants to sponsor an immigrant for a Green Card.

Known as the PERM process, H-1B holders can look to make their temporary visa permanent with a Green Card, but employers first have to test the market and see if they could, in fact, fill the role with a U.S. citizen or someone already in the country with legal resident status.

If they can prove that no American is suitable for the role, then the immigrant worker can move forward with their Green Card application.

“The underlying issue is that U.S. immigration policy requires most employers to do labor market testing at the PERM stage, when they are sponsoring a foreign worker for a Green Card, or permanent residence, not at the H-1B stage,” Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor with an immigration focus at the University of North Florida, told Newsweek.

What H-1B Positions Are Listed?

Jobs.Now lists roles such as software engineers, database administrators, and VP-level positions for science, tech, and capital management firms. At time of publishing, companies with open roles included Spotify, Mastercard and Uber.

One role, a trading job at Bank of America, asks for a master’s degree or equivalent, along with three years of experience in the field. One of the open Spotify roles seeking a software engineer asks for very specific qualifications related to different programming languages and practices.

“The PERM process was designed to allocate Green Cards to workers who had unique qualifications that were in shortage in America,” Jobs.Now told Newsweek.

“The law’s express purpose is to protect U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market by ensuring that foreign workers seeking immigrant visa classifications are not displacing equally qualified U.S. workers.’ As law-abiding U.S. citizens, we believe that companies should follow the law.”

The Department of Labor requires the roles be listed publicly, including in at least two major Sunday newspapers, on a state workforce agency site and internally at the company itself. Employers also have to choose from two other advertising methods, such as job fairs or at college campuses.

None of this is required when a company initially sets out to obtain an H-1B visa for a foreign worker, and there has long been skepticism around whether employers really put the effort into this process that they are required.

“At that point, most employers have identified a specific foreign worker already working for them on a H-1B visa they want to sponsor, and now they have to go test the labor market,” Zavodny said.

“The employer has typically invested heavily in training that worker by this point. If the U.S. wants employers to do labor market testing before hiring a foreign worker, it would make more sense to do it earlier in the process, not at this late stage.”

Trump’s ‘America First’ Agenda

While supporting the H-1B system, the president has also made it clear that he wants to see American workers put first in the labor market. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said in February that it would look to prosecute companies actively favoring foreign workers over citizens.

“The EEOC is putting employers and other covered entities on notice: if you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, in a February press release. “The law applies to you, and you are not above the law. The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers.”

Companies have faced penalties in the past for being seen to favor foreign workers. A job listings website in 2023 was found to have posted roles which specifically said H-1B roles would be favored. Other employers have been fined large sums for only seeking out those who spoke Spanish as a first language or only come from particular countries.

Elizabeth Jacobs, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, told Newsweek that regulations needed to be changed to stop employees’ ability to use loopholes in order to bypass American workers.

“The first Trump administration attempted to make some changes to deal with unfair competition caused by H-1B workers, but those regulations did not survive the Biden administration,” Jacobs said, adding that Congress needs to act instead.

“The obstacle are two-fold right now, largely because the public largely sees the H-1B visa program and the PERM process as one that they assume does have adequate protections for American workers. Also, the way the system is designed, to have the quote-unquote best and brightest workers from abroad, are crowded out by just the sheer volume of petitions that are filed.”

As for the roles listed on Jobs.Now, it may be that they are eventually filled with a U.S. citizen or an immigrant with legal permanent resident already. Its owners told Newsweek that they believe several thousand job applications have been generated by listings on its platform.

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