There is no law barring employment for felons â" on the contrary, the state goes out of its way to encourage employers to hire them, to reduce recidivism.
...but they do a rather bad job of it, as a great many of your larger employers have a zero-tolerance policy.
To be born and raised in the USA â" the country, to which millions of people dream of migrating (legally and otherwise) â" and waste your youthful years on crime?
The advice the OP is asking for applies to other folks as well. One of my friends has a felony record for running web hosting for a brothel a friend of his owned, and otherwise offering services and support to a business which was to the best of his knowledge strictly offering services between consenting adults... and not turning her in when he changed his mind about being willing to continue to provide that support. That folks who don't follow a libertarian philosophy could see that as a lapse of ethics is certainly granted -- but a lapse that should mean that 4/5ths of employment prospects are permanently off the table? That's harsh.
That said -- he's working today, for an employer well aware of the entirety of his background (including his meticulous attention to detail and corner cases in software design and development). So, yes -- fewer options, but some do still exist.
