Don’t use H1B to discriminate against local workers: US justice department
Justice department says the law prohibits firms from hiring or firing US workers because of their citizenship or national origin
Around the time the US began accepting petitions for the increasingly contentious H-1B visas on Monday, the justice department warned employers against using the programme to discriminate against Americans workers.
The citizenship and immigration services, which runs the H-1B programme, has also changed recruiting guidelines over the weekend to prevent US firms or US-based units of multinationals from using it to hire computer programmers.
“The justice department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against US workers,” said acting assistant attorney general Tom Wheeler of the civil rights division in a statement.
“US workers should not be placed in a disfavoured status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” he added.
While the justice department is known to have investigated and prosecuted allegations of discrimination before, it could not be immediately confirmed if such a warning was ever issued around the time employers began filing H-1B petitions.
The justice department the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) “prohibits employers from discriminating against US workers because of their citizenship or national origin in hiring, firing and recruiting”, and added, “Employers violate the INA if they have a discriminatory hiring preference that favours H-1B visa holders over US workers.”
The US grants 85,000 H-1B visas every year — 65,000 to foreign workers and 20,000 to international students enrolled in colleges and universities.
The programme has come heightened scrutiny in recent years, with critics arguing it is being used by companies to hire foreigners on low salaries to displace local American workers.
Many of these critics are now in the administration of President Trump, who has said the H-1B programme, which he used earlier in his businesses, is broken. There was even a draft of an executive order that circulated briefly but was never issued.
Indian IT companies, who admit to using this visa programme heavily, have, however, vigorously contested allegations of using this programme to discriminate against local workers, and have ramped up local hirings in recent years.
The biggest beneficiaries of H-1B visas are Indians — 70% of total H-1B petitions approved in 2014 were from Indians.