What's the repercussion of being a citizen or lawful permanent resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Sudan when applying for a job in the US?

Question

I was looking at this Facebook job description based in the US and read:

Please indicate whether you are either a citizen or lawful permanent resident of any of the following countries: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Sudan.

[] Yes [] No

NOTE: Facebook is asking this question, and will use your response, for the exclusive and limited purpose of compliance with federal export control laws and regulations.

What's the repercussion of being a citizen or lawful permanent resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Sudan when applying for a job in the US?

Answer 1

I can't find any indications that this could result in flat out denial of visas but it's more than likely that additional scrutiny would take place.

You can look at Virtual US Embassy in Iran and FAQ for more details as well as special information pages for Iranian applicants at processing centers such as Abu Dhabi.

You could check with an immigration attorney regarding additional details of USCIS processing of such visas but it is possible to receive it but could entail additional security checks and possible restricted access due to export restrictions (but this is a guess, I haven't found any hard data).

Answer 2

Look at the page you quoted. The issue is export laws, not merely working in the US.

While I have not paid attention to the details I know there are laws about the export of cryptography, although nowhere near as bad as they used to be. (Under the laws of some time back taking any modern browser out of the United States was treated as arms smuggling!)

I strongly suspect that Facebook could get in trouble if they hired someone from one of those countries to work on code that used cryptography that's subject to export restriction.