A lawsuit has been filed by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division against Cloudera, a California tech company, for allegedly violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by discriminating against U.S. workers, and favoring foreigner workers allowed in the U.S. on temporary visas.
“Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ. “The division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs.”
In support, the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed an enforcement action that suspends the company’s ability to participate in such employee applications for six months.
“Protecting the integrity of our immigration and labor systems requires employers to follow the law and provide American workers a fair opportunity to compete for jobs,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling. “Today’s action reflects this Administration’s commitment to holding bad actors accountable when they attempt to circumvent those protections.”
The DOJ’s complaint was filed with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which has jurisdiction over the INA.
The complaint charges the corporation deliberately created a separate recruitment and hiring process to deter U.S. workers from applying.
Further, it refused to consider them for high-paying tech jobs by earmarking those positions for people “with temporary employment visas.”
“Cloudera created an email account that did not allow external emails, but still instructed applicants to use that unworkable email address to apply for jobs,” federal investigators explained.
That was uncovered when a U.S. worker tried to apply, and “received a bounce back notification” through email.
“When sponsoring current employees under the permanent labor certification program (PERM), Cloudera purposely failed to recruit U.S. workers in good faith,” the prosecutors added.
The federal PERM program allows employers to sponsor foreigners for permanent resident status but only after trying to recruit U.S. workers.
The action is part of the DOJ’s Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, launched in 2015, that targets companies that illegally discriminate against U.S. workers.
The Department of Labor announcement said all applications filed by, or on behalf of, Cloudera, were suspended for 180 days.
