Copied from Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions:
The US Department of Labor is proposing a rule change that would add STEM occupations to their list of Schedule A occupations. Schedule A occupations are pre-certified and thus employers do NOT have to prove that they first sought American workers for a green card job. This comes on the heels of massive layoffs from the very people pushing this rule change.
From Tech Target:
The proposed exemption could be applied to a broad range of tech occupations including, notably, software engineering -- which represents about 1.8 million U.S. positions, according to U.S. labor statistics data -- and would allow companies to bypass some labor market tests if there's a demonstrated shortage of U.S. workers in an occupation.
Currently the comments include heavy support from libertarian think tank, Cato, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association
The San Francisco Tech scene has been riddled with CEOs whining over labor shortages for the past few months on Twitter/X amidst a sea of layoffs from Amazon, Meta, Google, Tesla, and much more. Now, we know that it's an attempt at influencing the narrative for these rule changes.
If you are having a hard time finding a job, now, this rule change will only make things worse.
From the US Census Bureau:
Does majoring in STEM Lead to a STEM job after graduation?
The vast majority (62%) of college-educated workers who majored in a STEM field were employed in non-STEM fields such as non-STEM management, law, education, social work, accounting or counseling. In addition, 10% of STEM college graduates worked in STEM-related occupations such as health care.
The path to STEM jobs for non-STEM majors was narrow. Only a few STEM-related majors (7%) and non-STEM majors (6%) ultimately ended up in STEM occupations.
If you or someone you know has experienced difficulty finding an engineering job post graduation amidst this so called shortage, then please submit your story in the remaining few days that the Public comment period is still open (ends May 13th.)
Public comment can be made, here:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/ETA-2023-0006-0001/comment
Please share this with anyone else you feel has will be affected by this rule change.
I'm not even in tech anymore and I'm filling out that form. If anything government agencies should bring the hammer down on making sure the tech companies are even actually trying to hire local before they go looking for visa hires or if they're just meeting the bare minimum to satisfy appearances while refusing all local applicants.
There is seemingly no threads on this on hackernews and this isn't getting much traction here. Spreading the word will help, if you can!