Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

I have to put out a ghost job req and interview every person applying within reason for every green card a direct report is applying for. I have to show there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job

The main problem is: even if the interviewee knocks it out of the park, is an amazing engineer, I still am not interested in firing my OPT/h1b team member who can still legally work for 2-3 years. So while I will deny their green card application and not submit it, I also won’t hire the interviewee

Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when they clearly could fill the job you don't hire them? Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce

At the last startup I worked at, our CTO was on a visa.

To satisfy the "no one in the US can fill the CTO role", they took out an advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper classifieds so they had evidence that they attempted to find a US citizen / permanent resident CTO.

Obviously there were no applicants.