As scrutiny tightens on immigration abuse, DoorDash seeks immigration ‘compliance’ expert

American employers are facing unprecedented scrutiny for immigration practices that regulators say have long disadvantaged U.S. workers. From mass layoffs followed by visa sponsorships to recruitment methods that quietly sidestep domestic applicants, federal agencies are increasingly examining whether employment-based immigration programs are being used as intended or exploited to displace Americans.

That scrutiny has intensified following President Trump’s recent proclamation proposing a $100,000 fee on employment-based visas, which was explicitly designed to deter abuse, curb labor arbitrage and force companies to prioritize U.S. workers before turning to foreign labor pipelines.

Against this backdrop, the immigration practices of DoorDash – the largest food delivery platform in the U.S. – deserve closer examination, particularly as the company actively expands its internal immigration operations.

DoorDash’s immigration patterns and practices

DoorDash is currently hiring an Immigration Program Manager, a staffer tasked with overseeing high-volume visa and green card sponsorship, managing compliance, coordinating with immigration law firms and scaling immigration operations across the Americas.

The job posting emphasizes discretion, independent judgment and ensuring lawful immigration processes. But the timing is notable.

DoorDash’s decision to expand or formalize its immigration operations warrants closer scrutiny, especially where existing practices appear to conflict with long-standing Department of Labor regulations designed to protect U.S. workers. That makes DoorDash’s existing immigration conduct, not just its future intentions, highly relevant.

One such concern arises from DoorDash’s PERM job advertisements. PERM, or Program Electronic Review Management, is the Department of Labor’s labor certification process required before an employer can sponsor a foreign worker for a green card, and is governed by strict recruitment and neutrality requirements.

For years, DoorDash required U.S. applicants responding to PERM labor certification job ads to mail in physical resumes, rather than apply through the company’s standard electronic hiring systems.

That approach mirrors practices cited by the DOJ in its landmark settlement with Facebook (now Meta) and Apple, where the agency found that mail-in-only applications for PERM roles discouraged U.S. workers and constituted unlawful discrimination.

A review of Doordash’s historical PERM job ads reveals that following the public announcement of the DOJ-Facebook settlement, DoorDash changed its PERM recruitment method, but only partially. Instead of mail-in resumes, applicants were instructed to email resumes directly – still outside DoorDash’s normal recruitment channels.

A departure from DoorDash’s normal hiring process

For non-PERM positions, DoorDash relies on a centralized corporate careers platform that allows electronic applications, recruiter screening and applicant tracking consistent with standard hiring practices. PERM applicants, however, are routed through a completely separate process. Instead of applying through DoorDash’s public careers website like other candidates, U.S. workers responding to PERM job advertisements are instructed to email their resumes directly to the company’s immigration department. Notably, despite submitting more than 650 PERM applications to the Department of Labor since 2021, DoorDash has advertised only one PERM position on its own employer careers page during that entire period.

This distinction is not cosmetic. Department of Labor regulations require PERM recruitment to reflect good-faith efforts using hiring procedures consistent with the employer’s normal recruitment practices. Creating a parallel, immigration-controlled intake system raises concerns about whether U.S. workers are being genuinely considered.

View DoorDash’s PERM applications here.

Law firm entanglement: Immigration management controlling PERM intake raises conflict concerns

The issue deepens when examining who receives those resumes. The purpose of the PERM process is to ensure U.S. workers are genuinely considered first. Yet DoorDash PERM job postings instruct applicants to submit resumes directly via email to Ryan Dolmat, DoorDash’s senior immigration program manager.

Publicly available professional profiles show that Dolmat simultaneously holds a full-time role at DoorDash and a long-standing position as an international project manager at Erickson Immigration Group, the law firm handling immigration matters for multiple Fortune 500 clients, including DoorDash. This dual role places immigration leadership, not neutral recruiters, at the center of PERM recruitment.

Department of Labor regulations explicitly prohibit an alien’s attorney or agent from participating in the recruitment, interview or consideration of U.S. applicants during PERM hiring, unless that person normally performs those hiring functions for the employer outside of labor certification.

The regulation continues by clarifying that neither the foreign worker nor his or her agent or attorney may interview or consider U.S. applicants during PERM recruitment unless they are the employer’s regular hiring representative for comparable non-PERM roles.

In DoorDash’s case, the individual receiving PERM resumes is not a general recruiter or hiring manager, but the company’s senior immigration program lead, who simultaneously works for the immigration law firm servicing the employer. Routing resumes to an immigration official whose professional success depends on visa and green card sponsorship outcomes places PERM recruitment in direct tension with that safeguard.

Public PERM disclosure data further highlights how centralized DoorDash’s process has become. In 2025, Ryan Dolmat is listed as the employer representative on 195 out of approximately 200 adjudicated DoorDash PERM applications.

The DoorDash case fits a wider pattern documented across Silicon Valley and Big Tech: companies expanding in-house immigration teams while outsourcing execution to the same firms that benefit financially from foreign labor sponsorship.

The advertised immigration manager role itself underscores this reality. The position is tasked not with hiring Americans, but with managing visa volume, scaling sponsorship, coordinating vendors and maintaining compliance optics as operations grow across the Americas.

In other words, immigration becomes a business function, measured by throughput, efficiency and scalability, rather than a compliance obligation rooted in protecting domestic workers.

Why this matters now

Federal regulators have repeatedly emphasized that immigration compliance failures are not technical errors. They are labor market violations with real consequences for U.S. workers who are excluded, filtered or never meaningfully considered.

DoorDash’s case is not isolated. Across corporate America, employers are increasingly being scrutinized for immigration programs that expand alongside layoffs, offshoring and domestic job displacement. The administration’s proposed $100,000 visa fee signals a fundamental shift. Companies that have relied on technical compliance while undermining the spirit of the law may soon find that approach untenable.

In this new enforcement era, immigration compliance is no longer a box to be checked or a process to be managed behind closed doors. It is a test of whether American workers are truly being put first or quietly displaced through systems designed to appear lawful while delivering predetermined outcomes. As regulators sharpen their focus and the administration signals zero tolerance for labor arbitrage, companies like DoorDash will be judged not by the titles they create or the policies they publish, but by whether their hiring practices genuinely reflect good-faith recruitment of Americans.

Employers that have built business models around exploiting loopholes, outsourcing accountability or sidelining U.S. workers may soon find the era of quiet compliance theater is over and that the cost of getting it wrong is far higher than the price of doing it right.

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