A Texas-based farm discriminated against qualified Americans for crop harvesting jobs, instead hiring foreign workers that they imported on the H-2A visa program, the Department of Justice (DOJ) states.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced a settlement with A. Olivarez Harvesting which stood accused of discriminating against qualified Americans for crop harvesting jobs to fill the positions with foreign H-2A visa workers.
As Breitbart News has reported, Americans are often replaced by imported, foreign H-2A visa workers. Black Americans in Mississippi are currently suing after their employers fired and replaced them with foreign H-2A visa workers from South Africa.
According to the settlement, Olivarez Harvesting had agreed to offer corn harvesting jobs to two American citizen brothers. The brothers were then falsely told by Olivarez Harvesting that the harvesting jobs were no longer available and offered them lower-wage warehouse jobs.
In actuality, federal prosecutors said Olivarez Harvesting gave the corn harvesting jobs to foreign workers they had imported on the H-2A visa program — an uncapped visa category that allows United States farms to import foreign workers to take agricultural jobs.
“Employers engage in unlawful discrimination against U.S. workers by giving an advantage to temporary visa workers because of their citizenship or immigration status,” the DOJ’s Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
The settlement with Olivarez Harvesting requires the company to pay more than $14,000 in back pay and civil penalties to the two Americans who were discriminated against and be subject to DOJ monitoring for three years.
The H-2A visa program is rich with fraud and abuse.
Months ago, for instance, the DOJ settled with a Missouri farm operated by a Florida-based company that was found to have imported foreign H-2A visa workers for jobs, housed them in an old jail that did not have a kitchen or access to water aside from bathroom sinks, and hardly had any windows for natural light and air.
The company had also deprived foreign H-2A visa workers of wages owed to them and forced many to share water bottles while working — leading to some passing out in the extreme heat of the summer.
In 1997, a little more than 16,000 foreign H-2A visa workers were imported to take American agriculture jobs. By 2021, that number had exploded to more than 258,000. About 93 percent of all H-2A visas are awarded to Mexican nationals.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.