DOJ Fines Bus Company for Hiring H-2B Foreign Workers Over Americans, by
John Binder, 5/29/19, Breitbart. The Department of Justice (DOJ) fined a bus company this week
after finding that the business had discriminated against qualified American
citizens and hired imported foreign workers on the H-2B visa instead.
Instead, the DOJ settlement found, El Expreso Bus Company hired imported foreign workers who arrived in the United States on the H-2B visa, which has been recently expanded to bring tens of thousands more low-skilled foreign workers to the country by President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Instead, the DOJ settlement found, El Expreso Bus Company hired imported foreign workers who arrived in the United States on the H-2B visa, which has been recently expanded to bring tens of thousands more low-skilled foreign workers to the country by President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
On Wednesday, the
Justice Department announced a settlement against El Expreso Bus Company in
Houston, Texas which investigators discovered had wrongfully thrown out or
ignored applications of qualified Americans for temporary bus driver positions.
According
to the settlement, El Expreso Bus Company must pay $31,500 in civil penalties,
as well as nearly $200,000 in lost wages to American citizens who applied for
and were qualified for the jobs but were not hired.
“Employers
cannot discriminate against qualified U.S. workers because they prefer to hire
visa holders,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Civil Rights
Division said in a statement. “This agreement is part of the Civil Rights
Division’s continuing commitment to protect U.S. workers from discrimination,
and we look forward to working with El Expreso as a partner in compliance.”
The Protecting U.S.
Workers Initiative of the Justice Department was created in 2017 by former
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and has since settled six cases with businesses
who were found to have discriminated against qualified American citizens by
passing on them for jobs in order to hire imported foreign workers.
In February, a Virginia
firm was fined after hiring foreign workers
imported through the H-1B visa program instead of hiring qualified American
citizens who had applied for jobs.
The H-2B visa program
has been widely used by businesses to drag down the wages of American workers
in landscaping, conservation work, the meatpacking industry, the
construction industry, and fishing jobs, the latest study from the Center for Immigration
Studies finds.
When comparing the wages
of H-2B foreign workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar
industry, about 21 out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign
workers than Americans.
Though Trump signed his
“Buy American, Hire American” executive order in early 2017, his DHS Secretaries, General John Kelly, Kirstjen Nielsen,
and Kevin McAleenan, have each approved tens of thousands of additional
H-2B foreign workers that businesses are allowed to import to take U.S. jobs.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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