Sillyness of visa regulations

A US Economics department hired an non-US citizen. It needs to provide evidence that it did a search which was proper in order to obtain a visa for the new faculty: no discrimination against Americans, open position properly advertised, no undercutting of wages, and the best available was hired. These are procedures that are common to every country. It is in the details that the hassle starts.

Remember when Jobs Openings for Economists (JOE), published by the American Economic Association, was a print publication? You could then just put an issue in the documentation to send to state and federal authorities to prove that you did a proper search. Now that JOE is online only, you cannot do that. And a printout from the web page is not legal documentation. So how can you provide documentation that fits the criteria, that is, is in a printed outlet? Put an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which nobody reads. If you did not think of this little trick, you are in trouble.

And that is silly.