The Department of Justice (DOJ) is fining a Charlottesville, Virginia, firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of qualified Americans in its latest settlement, thanks to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative.
The Justice Department announced this week it will fine CFA Institute (CFAI) more than $320,000 for choosing to discriminate against qualified American workers by specifically hiring foreign workers imported through the H-1B visa program.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
The DOJ investigation revealed that CFAI, a nonprofit firm of investment professionals, hired H-1B visa foreign workers to administer an exam for financial analysists that provides them with a global certification if they pass.
According to DOJ officials, CFAI “violated the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by preferring to hire H-1B visa holders over U.S. workers when it selected CFAI exam graders from its members.”
Between November 2016 and January 2018, the Virginia firm allocated annual exam-grading job positions to H-1B visa foreign workers before even recruiting qualified American professionals.
“The Civil Rights Division works diligently to stop employers from unlawfully denying employment opportunities to qualified and available U.S. workers,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
The DOJ settlement means CFAI will pay a $321,000 fine, be mandated to train employees on the requirements of the INA’s anti-discrimination provision, and be monitored by the Justice Department.
This is the fifth settlement that the DOJ has brought in Sessions’ Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative and the first that handled the abuse of the H-1B visa, which is readily used by Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys and Tata Consulting Services to outsource American middle-class jobs to mostly Indian male nationals.
Last year, alone, U.S. businesses attempted to outsource nearly 420,000 American jobs to foreign workers, a population that exceeds the total population of Tampa, Florida.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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