This was definitely a trigger for me.
A few years ago, I had some great email exchanges about a position. I was an experienced dev, and I knew what they were looking for. But to make it official, I had to go through their HR person.
This was the first time I was going to talk to someone from the company, live in a video call.
And the moment we jumped on a call, her first words were, "Do you have a green card?"
I was born here. One look at my skin color and that was her question.
I have friend who told me that his father speaks broken english to non-native speakers. If they hire landscapers, for example, he'll start mimicking a hispanic accent and dropping words and deliberately changing grammar. His entire family is terribly embarrassed by this behavior, even if he means well. What a tool.
As we've been told since at least the early nineties: if a non-native english speaker can't understand you, just repeat yourself and ASK LOUDER. /s
I used to work in HR. In my first week, the HR Manager walked around with me on the floor of our factory. We had a lot of Vietnamese employees. She wanted me to start learning people's names, but the first time we encountered a Viet person she whispered to me "hey, between you and me, I can't really tell them apart since they all look similar and have similar names, so if you can't remember them then it's no biggie". Like what??? Ma'am you are the HR manager.
No worries. I've seen plenty of job postings for POC LGBTQWTF "STRONGLY URGED TO APPLY." You should be fine.
I have never encountered a posting like that, but I'd be interested to see an example of it if you have one. Happen to have a link to one?
Edit: So that's a no then. That's a... problematic thing to make up.
It's not a valid question at all. "Are you legally able to work in the United States" has been a question on literally every single job application I've ever filled out. There's zero valid reasons for the interviewer to not know the answer already, and even less than zero valid reasons for them to phrase the question the way they did.
It’s not only not a valid question, it might not even be a legal question.
I’m a hiring manager for a very large tech company in California. I cannot ask any questions about age, ethnicity, country of origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital status, health, and so on.
HR can ask if they’re eligible to work in the US, and I can ask whether they have the skills and talents I need for the position, but it’s tightly limited.
It still crops up all the time. There are decades worth of studies showing how having a non-white looking name or having age indicators present in work history or graduation dates influence reviewers to reject applications they’d otherwise accept.
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Yeah, but they always ask about "citizenship or ability to legally work in the US" on applications. If it was a white person, they wouldn't have said anything. If the candidate were white, and they answered "no" on the form, they would've just not been moved forward in the hiring process. They wouldn't have gotten to that point and still been asked.
You can’t ask that question because immigration status is a protected class. It’s up to the candidate to provide appropriate documentation at the time of hire
I mean you're getting g downvoted, but I'm painfully white and in the UK. Every job interview either the first or second question I get asked is "do you have the right to work in the UK?" Or "do you need a visa to work in the UK?"
That's very different than automatically assuming you aren't a citizen of the UK and asking if you have permanent residence.
That's very different than automatically assuming you aren't a citizen of the UK and
That's actually exactly what asking me if I need a visa to work in the UK means.
No, that leaves open the possibility that you are a UK citizen. "Do you have green card?" skips over asking if you are a citizen and goes straight to "Are you at least a permanent resident?"
Put another way, if the candidate answers "No." to "Do you have a green card?" That doesn't tell the recruiter if they need a visa or if they have the right to work in the US without a presumption that they aren't a citizen.
So you're saying it would be perfectly acceptable and neither you nor OP would complain if the question was: "Do you need a greencard?"
That's kind of a weird question, too. Like, what does it mean if you say no? That you are a citizen or that you don't intend to become a permanent resident?
"Do you need a visa?" Or "Are you legally allowed to work in the United States?" would be the way it would generally be asked and isn't a problem. See all the comments that replied to the person saying it wasn't a big deal.
Very clearly the ad was run including requirements that were supposed to be known only to the recruiter.
Remember this next time someone tells you there is no justification for affirmative action programs.
Only a sloppy (or maliciously compliant) person responsible for committing the ad copy exposed this for what it was. Had they done their job as intended, there would have been no evidence of these racist hiring practices.
And now all the non-bigots know that they don't want to work for (checks notes) Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. based in Loudoun County, Virginia.
I certainly hope that when searching for this company, top google search results will show that Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. based in Loudoun County, Virginia was fined by the justice department for seeking to hire whites only, at the exclusion of non-whites and those born outside the US.
Minor edit to fix word choice...
It’s also probably worth the Department of Labor’s time to investigate their previous hiring practices. When every single employee ends up being white, the DOL will likely be able to come down on them with even bigger fines. Because proving discrimination often requires a pattern, but an all-white payroll would be a nice shiny pattern for the DOL to grab onto and parade around in court.
This also may have been a targeting instruction accidentally posted in the ad.
After all, with contemporary targeting knowing everything about everyone it should be easy to only show that to, e.g. straight white cis male US citizens of 34.4 years old with 2.2 male children
Wasn't this company already involved with something similar before? Arthur Grand rings a bell
Here's a link to the story:
It's strange that there's no comment from the company.
Thank you! I really, really hate this trend of posting a screenshot of a headline or part of an article. Why not post a link to the actual article?
The job posting by Ashburn-based Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. was published in March 2023 and said that the company was only looking for “U.S. Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates],” according to a Justice Department news release.
I'm telling you, these job replies from HR have gotten pretty cryptic, but I send out what they tell me to send. It's not my job to understand, just to send the emails.
"Dear [Candidate],
We regret to inform you that [Company Name] is no longer hiring for the position of [job title]. Thank you for your interest in [Company Name].
Sincerely, [Your Name]"
According to the article, the company is under departmental monitoring as well as the fine. They can't make this kind of move again in the short term.
It looks like the line that was included in the job posting was not meant to be published, but was an instruction for the recruiter:
“U.S. Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates],”
If the company hadn't been too cheap to hire local, US born, white, racist citizens to handle the job posting, they might have been able to continue being scummy without anyone being able to prove it.
Yeah, but I wouldn't expect some guy in India to be in a position to intentionally fuck over his employer no matter how much they want to.
I worked at cricket when I was younger and the outsourced customer service was terrible. They would not only hang up on customers but they would hang up on employees and managers too. My only point is that they very well could be in the position to not give any fucks.
I worked at cricket when I was younger and the outsourced customer service was terrible. They would not only hang up on customers but they would hang up on employees and managers too. My only point is that they very well could be in the position to not give any fucks.
There are multiple “consulting” agencies in the US that have gotten in trouble for not hiring anyone aside from south Asians. If this job was posted by someone in India, there is probably a non-zero chance they were hiring this “white” only person because they were trying to offset the fact that they only hire south Asians otherwise.
I worked for a company in my mid 20's that wouldn't hire anyone not white. I head the boss' wife, the "Office Manager," joke about she could always tell who was black, no matter how "good they talked on the phone," because they would always pronounce words that ended in "ment" as "mint." As in "depart-mint." They all thought it was hilarious. I wasn't there long.
Oh! Now I understand why my English teacher was a total fascist when it came to those kinds of pronunciations! Pen-guin got us a fair few times. Neat. She was just extra racist.