U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Dept. of Justice will file a lawsuit against Crop Production Services, Inc. for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by discriminating against American workers. This will be the first lawsuit based on Pres. Trump’s ‘Buy American, Hire American’ executive order that he signed in April.
“In the spirit of President Trump’s Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American, the Department of Justice will not tolerate employers who discriminate against U.S. workers because of a desire to hire temporary foreign visa holders,” Sessions said in a statement.
“The Justice Department will enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act in order to protect U.S. workers as they are the very backbone of our communities and our economy. Where there is a job available, U.S. workers should have a chance at it before we bring in workers from abroad.”
According to the DOJ, in 2016 the Crop Production company refused to give at least three American workers seasonal jobs in El Campo, TX. They found that all of the company’s 15 available seasonal technician jobs went to H-2A workers that year instead of Americans.
The DOJ also discovered that the company imposed stricter job requirements such as a background check and drug testing before American workers could start but did not wait for H-2A workers to fulfill these requirements before working. In some cases, the H-2A foreign worker never completed these requirements.
The DOJ suit also includes a complaint that Crop Production refused to consider an American worker with limited English-speaking ability, instead they hired a H-2A worker who could not speak any English.
Read more on this story at The Department of Justice.
