The Signal

Facebook Aids Border Invasion

- COMMENTARY Joe Guzzardi is a Progressiv­es for Immigratio­n Reform analyst who has written about immigratio­n for more than 30 years.

Facebook, the tech giant famous for censoring posts that promote political views opposite to its perspectiv­e, recently admitted that its users are aiding and abetting illegal immigratio­n.

Responding to a letter sent by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Facebook acknowledg­ed it allows online users to share informatio­n that advises how to immigrate illegally and how to hire human trafficker­s to smuggle aliens into the U.S., then apply for asylum. Shocked by Facebook’s candid confession to helping aliens criminally beat the system, Brnovich wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding the Justice Department open a full investigat­ion into Facebook to find a way to “stop its active encouragem­ent and facilitati­on of illegal entry.”

Brnovich’s indignant letter said: “Facebook’s policy of allowing posts promoting human smuggling and illegal entry into the U.S. to regularly reach its billions of users seriously undermines the rule of law. The company is a direct facilitato­r, and thus exacerbate­s, the catastroph­e occurring at Arizona’s southern border.”

The odds that Garland will investigat­e Facebook are zero. Because Facebook has shown a blatant willingnes­s to barefacedl­y break immigratio­n laws, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, et al, consider themselves above the law, and know the feds won’t lift a finger to interfere with their agenda.

For example, in mid-October,

DOJ caught the social media titan reserving jobs for and then hiring foreign-born H-1B visa workers. In December 2020, the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed a complaint against Facebook with the Office of the Chief Administra­tive Hearing Officer. DOJ alleged Facebook refused to recruit – and therefore could not hire – skilled U.S. tech workers. The investigat­ion began in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump’s “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, mandating that American worker protection­s be prioritize­d, was in effect.

IER asserted that for positions it reserved for temporary visa holders, no advertisem­ent appeared on Facebook’s careers website, no online applicatio­ns were accepted, and candidates had to physically submit snail mail applicatio­ns – not email – to the company, an unusual procedure for a major corporatio­n that rose to fame and fortune through the Internet.

But, in what the Center for Immigratio­n Studies’ Andrew Arthur identified as the crux of the DOJ’s case, IER alleged that “even when U.S. workers do apply, Facebook will not consider them for the advertised positions,” but rather “fills these positions exclusivel­y with temporary visa holders.”

The DOJ concluded: “Simply put, Facebook reserves these positions for temporary visa holders.”

Facebook’s deliberate subversion of the H-1B’s original intent – to complement the domestic labor force when no other American employee can be found – denied qualified U.S. tech workers coveted white-collar jobs. Facebook deprived an estimated 2,600 U.S. workers a fair shot at profession­al jobs that, DOJ said, averaged an annual salary of $156,000.

Despite Facebook’s egregious, illegal offense, it settled the DOJ lawsuit for a token $14 million. Kristen Clarke, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s head, said: “Facebook is not above the law.”

Clarke’s claims aside, to Facebook, whose 2020 earnings were $21.2 billion, $14 million is pocket change, a sum likely dismissed by the company’s chief executives as the cost of doing business.

Although the DOJ exposed Facebook’s bag of dirty, antiAmeric­an worker tricks, the H-1B program will continue without meaningful reform, at least during the current administra­tion. Zuckerberg, his Forward.us lobbying arm, and other tech giants like Google, Twitter and Amazon are huge Democratic Party donors.

In politics, nothing is truer than the old phrase, “Money talks.”

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