This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Most Americans assume that when a company posts a job opening, it actually wants someone to apply. That's how the labor market is supposed to work.
But in the world of immigration sponsorship, job postings sometimes serve a very different purpose: checking a box for the government, while keeping American workers in the dark.
Under the Department of Labor's PERM process (Program Electronic Review Management), employers seeking to sponsor foreign workers for green cards must first prove they tried to hire Americans. The law requires them to place ads, review resumes and certify that no qualified U.S. worker was available before moving forward with sponsorship.
Yet most Americans have never seen these ads – because employers often place them where no one is likely to look. They thus satisfy the letter of the law while ensuring the jobs are already earmarked for someone else. That's where Jobs.Now, a U.S. worker advocacy group, stepped in. By republishing these hidden ads online, Jobs.Now gave them the visibility the law intended, visibility that many employers have quietly worked to avoid.
Instacart's heavy hand
When Jobs.Now reposted one of Instacart's PERM ads to make it visible to the public, the publicly traded San Francisco-based company didn't thank the website for the free advertising. Instead, Instacart sent a trademark complaint letter.
The letter, transmitted by a third-party enforcement firm, accused Jobs.Now of "infringing Instacart's intellectual property rights" and even suggested the group suspend their web domain. The company reserved the right to pursue monetary damages, all because an advocacy group had posted a job listing that Instacart itself was legally required to advertise.
The real issue – and what Instacart's ads expose
Why such a heavy-handed response? The answer may lie in Instacart's job advertisements and recruitment practices tied to the PERM program. Federal rules, written decades ago, force employers to place notices in old-school newspapers and state workforce sites. But the intent of the law is clear and companies must make a "good faith" effort to recruit Americans before turning to foreign workers. That means actually trying to reach U.S. applicants, not burying ads where no one will look, or setting up recruitment processes designed to avoid finding U.S. candidates.
How Instacart blocked Americans
Jobs.Now's reposting exposed the truth: Instacart's job ads were nowhere to be found on the company's career page, LinkedIn, or any platform where real applicants look for work. Instead, the posting was buried in a classified newspaper, directing candidates to mail paper resumes to "Global Mobility," a department that does not hire Americans but oversees visa processing for foreign workers.
That distinction is critical. In 2025, almost no one applies for a tech job by mailing in a paper resume. And even if an American did, his or her application would never reach a hiring manager. It would be funneled straight to the immigration team whose role is not to recruit talent, but to record why no U.S. worker was deemed "qualified."
The two-track system
The Department of Justice has already gone after companies for similar practices. Facebook paid $14 million and Apple paid $25 million in settlements for requiring mailed resumes and reserving jobs for foreign workers through the PERM process.
Like Facebook, Apple forced applicants for PERM positions to submit paper resumes by mail instead of through its online portal, and it left those jobs off its public-facing career site. Investigators found that Apple's practices weren't consistent with the way it usually hired, which was overwhelmingly through digital systems designed to attract a wide pool of candidates.
In both cases, the DOJ made clear the issue wasn't that companies were using the PERM process; that's allowed by law. The issue was that they intentionally set up a two-track system: one for normal jobs where Americans could apply easily and another for PERM jobs where the process itself made it virtually impossible for Americans to compete.
Why Instacart's response matters
The key question now is why Instacart chose to file a trademark complaint when Jobs.Now was, in effect, providing free visibility for a job posting Instacart was already legally required to advertise?
If the postings are legitimate, wider visibility should mean more qualified Americans applying. But the company's legal maneuver suggests something else: that these ads may not truly be about recruiting U.S. workers at all, but about protecting a visa pipeline while keeping the door closed to the very people the law was designed to protect.
Turning the tables on corporate abuse
At its core, the PERM system was designed to test the U.S. labor market. Sharing those job ads publicly and encouraging qualified Americans to apply isn't just lawful, it's exactly what the process requires. When companies or their attorneys try to suppress that visibility with trademark claims or intimidation tactics, they may be crossing a legal line of their own.
Federal law, under INA §1324b, makes it an unfair immigration-related employment practice to intimidate, threaten, coerce or retaliate against anyone for exercising or helping others exercise their rights under the statute. That protection extends to advocates who assist U.S. workers in seeing or applying for jobs. Trying to prevent circulation of these ads could be interpreted as obstruction of compliance evidence. And suppressing access to recruitment ads could make the labor market test fraudulent, since U.S. workers cannot reasonably find and apply.
What began as a trademark threat could end up flipping the script on Instacart. By trying to muzzle the lawful sharing of job ads, it may have invited even sharper scrutiny, not only of how the company recruits, but of how it responds when Americans shine a light on the very system meant to protect them.
