Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is leading a probe into President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for what he alleges is favoritism to foreign workers over American citizens in employment discrimination cases.
In a letter to DOJ officials, Vance, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) suggest that the department has become increasingly laser-focused on employment discrimination cases where foreign workers are the alleged victims.
Meanwhile, cases where Americans are the alleged victims of employment discrimination have dwindled to a small fraction since Biden took office in late January 2021.
“We write to ensure that the DOJ is faithfully carrying out its statutory duty to protect American workers from employment practices that privilege asylum seekers, parolees, and other aliens over American citizens. Recent reports suggest that these practices are growing in prevalence, but the Civil Rights Division is nowhere to be found,” the senators wrote:
As you know, U.S. citizens are “protected individuals” against whom employers cannot discriminate under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In fact, they are more than protected—they are preferred. The INA provides that “it is not an unfair immigration-related employment practice for a person or other entity to prefer to hire, recruit, or refer an individual who is a citizen or national of the United States over another individual who is an alien” if both are fully qualified for the position. Federal law thus instructs employers to put a thumb on the scale in favor of U.S. workers: as one federal appellate court put it, “if you have a U.S. citizen and a foreigner with exactly the same qualification, you take the U.S. citizen.” [Emphasis added]
One would thus expect the officials tasked with enforcing the INA’s prohibition on citizenship discrimination to be at least as concerned about U.S. citizen victims as they are about aliens. But if that is true, then its truth has been obscured by recent events. [Emphasis added]
In particular, the senators noted that the DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) published 46 press releases in the last two years regarding enforcement of the INA’s anti-discrimination provisions.
Of those press releases, fewer than 2 in 10 involved any employment discrimination against American citizens, and just two involved discrimination exclusively against American citizens.
“It would seem, then, that a disproportionate share of IER’s resources have been deployed to protect precisely those workers that federal law disfavors, all else being equal,” the senators wrote.
While former President Donald Trump’s DOJ opened the Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative to specifically target employers favoring foreign workers over Americans, Biden ended the project when he terminated the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order in 2021.
The senators alleged that employers are taking advantage as a result.
“Employers have taken advantage of IER’s leniency,” the senators wrote:
Collaborating with advocacy organizations like the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a long list of American employers have begun to blatantly discriminate on the basis of citizenship and immigration status, even committing themselves to numerical hiring quotas. Starbucks has committed to hiring 10,000 refugees across all its markets (including the U.S. market), Amazon has committed to hiring 5,000 refugees in the United States alone, and numerous others—including Hyatt Hotels, PepsiCo, and Pfizer—have committed to hiring 500 refugees or more. The INA prohibits hiring decisions that are made “because of” an American job seeker’s U.S. citizenship. Can employers’ numerical hiring quotas coexist with that mandate? [Emphasis added]
Some companies, like Tyson Foods, even provide employment benefits exclusively to noncitizens. Tyson has spent significant sums “reimburs[ing] team members for citizenship application fees” and retaining organizations that “provide immigrants with legal services, such as employment authorization renewals and petitions for citizenship.” In theory, these benefits may be open to all-comers. But how many U.S. citizens need their employers to pay citizenship application fees? [Emphasis added]
By May 31, the senators are asking the DOJ for records on whether or not the department is currently investigating any employers for hiring refugees over Americans.
The senators also want answers on the percentage of employment discrimination investigations, settlements, and litigation matters over the last two years that involved only American citizens, as well as if the department believes it is legal to provide employment benefits solely to foreign workers.
Vance has long sounded the alarm on the Biden administration’s perceived favoritism to foreign workers over American citizens.
In August of last year, Breitbart News exclusively detailed Vance’s efforts to bring transparency regarding the DOJ’s lawsuit against SpaceX — which accuses Elon Musk’s rocket company of failing to “fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees.”
The following month, SpaceX countersued the DOJ to throw out the lawsuit.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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