QUICK HISTORY LESSON: Why most H-1B employers never have to certify that no American can do the job The modern H-1B program was created by the Immigration Act of 1990. During drafting, proposals that would have required employers to actively recruit U.S. workers and attest they could not find a qualified American were considered… and then DELIBERATELY dropped from the final bill. Congress instead created the Labor Condition Application (LCA), which mainly requires attestations on wages (the higher of the actual wage paid to similar employees or the prevailing wage) and that working conditions will not be adversely affected. No routine labor-market test proving U.S. worker unavailability for ordinary employers. The extra rules that do require good-faith recruitment of Americans and non-displacement attestations apply only to “H-1B-dependent” employers (generally those whose workforce meets size-based thresholds, such as 15%+ H-1B for larger companies) or prior willful violators. Those provisions were added in 1998 by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act. Most large tech companies do not meet the dependency test. The full “unable to find a qualified, willing, and available American” recruitment process has always been required for PERM (permanent labor certification for most employment-based green cards), not for standard H-1B petitions.