- Hiring Process
Moving a seat to Manila is not the same as an H1B filter
Intent is the hard part of a hiring case. This one came attached to the job.
Firms could not produce the rule they screened their last shortlist by. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued a technology sector staffing agency at the end of last month, claiming it openly preferred to hire only H-1B visa holders. HR Dive reported that a California job seeker received an email about a data analyst role carrying the phrase "ONLY H1B." Intent is the hard part of a hiring case. This one arrived in an inbox.
What was in the email
Per HR Dive, the commission has been pressing national origin cases in recent months, on behalf of American workers. The allegation is not that somebody held a preference. It is that somebody typed it, attached it, and sent it to a candidate who kept it. A preference nobody has to infer. Allegation, not finding. Legible either way.
Where the filters live
Post the role, forward the pile to whoever has an hour, and let the filter live in that person's head. Nobody writes it down. Nobody can repeat it back a year later either. Screening criteria have never been cross-examined, which firms read as safety. It is closer to the opposite.
A rule nobody recorded is not a rule that went away. It is a rule nobody can produce, defend, or correct. Criteria written down before anybody is interviewed are the only ones a firm can hand to another reader and get the same shortlist back. The email in this filing is quotable because it exists on paper. Writing it down was not the fault. Whatever rule it carried was.
Where offshore sits in this
A firm sorting US applicants by immigration status is not making the same decision as a firm moving a seat to Manila. The cost line at the end of the month will not tell them apart. One allocates an American desk by who holds what paper. The other asks whether the desk needed to be American.
I read the difference as a question about the seat rather than the person. A visa fee prices where the work sits, not what the worker can do. So does a zip code. So does a salary paid in another country. None of those says anything about a candidate. A stated restriction on who may apply does.
This is a complaint, not a ruling. Anybody treating a filing as settled law is reading ahead of the record. What it does show is how little it takes to make a preference legible. A line, in writing, forwarded to someone. A seat can be specified down to the hour. A person cannot be specified down to a visa.
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