No - that's not right - they can't discriminate against people who have work-status, but they absolutely can discriminate against people who don't have status aka arbitrary foreign nationals.

And it would be absurd if they could not.

Also, in some cases, employers should be able to discriminate, it's totally different to hire someone on an n-month visa vs full time.

Granted, it's different if they are Green Card.

It's also perfectly normal to want to hire locals, if it can be done on a national basis, then I think for some roles, state ought to be fine as well. If state governments had a state preference for in-state nationals, that would be fine, for example.

The issue here is by far and away mostly one of transparency and efficiency - the rules should be clear and the bureaucracy should just function normally.

The fact that anything takes months, or that you need lawyers etc is a sign of dysfunction.

It should be about as complicated as getting a prescription. 'One trip to an office and done'.

There is no obligation[1] to consider any candidate who needs visa sponsorship. Green cards are different. In hiring they must be considered like any citizen candidate.

For those seemingly not believing this, read: [1]https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-company-refuse-to-c...

Companies can though use proxies like whether a candidate would require visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Most immigration is based on hiring people into jobs for which the skills exist locally but which demand higher wages than immigrants. This is called a labor shortage by employers who prefer not to think of it as a salary shortage.

This is based on my experience in working with good immigrant coders who got the job over about equally capable locals, but more cheaply. The immigrants (mostly Indian and Chinese) tended to have weaker English communication skills but stronger work ethics.

Many job reqs are scams intended to satisfy the "doesn't exist locally requirement" (superficially) so that exploitable foreigners are importable.

Nobody has 20 years of React experience, of course, but that doesn't stop people from listing this as a requirement - or a pre-selected group of people on the other end from asserting this experience.

This is just false. There are lot of reasons people hire immigrants, very few are truly incredible, singular talents. I lived with a bunch of Indian immigrants when in SF and it was universally guys not as skilled as me hired because there was a pipeline for Brahmin to the US.