U.S. citizens are “protected individuals” against whom employers cannot discriminate under the Immigration and Nationality Act. In fact, they are more than protected—they are preferred.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator JD Vance (R-OH), along with Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), sent a letter to the Department of Justice to raise concerns that the administration is not faithfully carrying out its legal duties to protect American workers from employment practices that privilege asylum seekers, parolees, and other aliens over American citizens.
Under the Trump administration, the DOJ Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) launched a “Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative” which “yielded dozens of investigations, numerous settlements, and millions of dollars of compensation for American workers.” Within a month of taking office, President Biden recinded the executive order that supported that effort. Since, the IER appears to have shifted its focus away from the protection of U.S. citizens and toward the protection of non-citizens, whom federal law disfavors.
In today’s letter, Senator Vance writes, in part:
Employers have taken advantage of IER’s leniency. 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?
Senator Vance then requests answers from the administration concerning the potentially illegal usage of the IER office and Civil Rights Devision to disfavor U.S. citizens.
Read Senator Vance’s letter here and below. Read more from Fox News.
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