Jumping Through Hoops

The university where I work recently went through a search process to hire a new faculty member in my department.

My discipline is Information Systems, a field in which there is a disproportionate ratio of non-U.S. citizens to U.S. citizens (regrettable, but a subject rich with issues for discussing at another time).

We posted an appropriate ad in an appropriate venue (thank you, HR [sarcasm]). After reviewing the responses, conducting phone interviews, and bringing the short-list survivors in for a campus visit, we hired the person we felt was most qualified for the job. He turned out to be a non-U.S. citizen. Not a surprise, given the previously mentioned imbalance of us vs. them (not being judgmental, just categorizing contestants like the Olympics) .

Anyway, the USCIS (gov't. agency that used to be the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS) requires that the hiring institution conduct an assessment to determine that a non-U.S. citizen is hired only if there is not an equivalently qualified U.S. citizen. So it would seem logical that all we need to do is go through our pool of applicants and compare the U.S. citizens to the person we eventually hired - right?

Not so fast, Kemo Sabe.

Seems there's another government agency, the Dept. of Labor, that feels it must justify its existence by getting involved. The DOL insists that we go back and review ALL the applications - all 100+ of them - and document why the selected applicant was better-qualified than each individual non-selected applicant. Which is what we did as part of the search process. But does that satisfy the DOL? Noooooo...

Because we are re-assessing the candidates to satisfy the USCIS, the DOL considers that a new search, and therefore we must go through the entire evaluation process again. (Bang head against desk repeatedly.)

Bottom line - we are complying with DOL requirements and thoroughly, meticulously, and painstakingly reviewing all the applications (wink, wink).