Facepalm

It's not a valid question at all. "Are you legally able to work in the United States" has been a question on literally every single job application I've ever filled out. There's zero valid reasons for the interviewer to not know the answer already, and even less than zero valid reasons for them to phrase the question the way they did.

It’s not only not a valid question, it might not even be a legal question.

I’m a hiring manager for a very large tech company in California. I cannot ask any questions about age, ethnicity, country of origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital status, health, and so on.

HR can ask if they’re eligible to work in the US, and I can ask whether they have the skills and talents I need for the position, but it’s tightly limited.

It still crops up all the time. There are decades worth of studies showing how having a non-white looking name or having age indicators present in work history or graduation dates influence reviewers to reject applications they’d otherwise accept.

Yeah, but they always ask about "citizenship or ability to legally work in the US" on applications. If it was a white person, they wouldn't have said anything. If the candidate were white, and they answered "no" on the form, they would've just not been moved forward in the hiring process. They wouldn't have gotten to that point and still been asked.

You can’t ask that question because immigration status is a protected class. It’s up to the candidate to provide appropriate documentation at the time of hire