Trump administration accuses Facebook of discriminating against Americans in hiring

Facebook preferred to hire immigrant workers rather than looking to see if Americans could match the positions concerned.

This is in substance the accusation made by the Trump administration against the social network.

The latter is sued after a two-year investigation.

Facebook "

" for these positions, the Justice Department wrote in a statement.

The Trump administration is targeting 2,600 recruitments made by the social network between January 2018 and September 2019.

The positions in question were obtained by Facebook employees who had previously held so-called H-1B temporary work visas.

These are reserved for immigrants with highly qualified profiles, such as doctors or engineers.

Large companies in Silicon Valley are fond of H-1B visas.

They allow them to attract highly qualified international profiles - often Indian engineers.

Atypical recruitment processes

Thanks to their final hiring at Facebook, these immigrant employees were able to receive their green card.

However, in the United States, the rules for obtaining this permanent visa are quite strict.

The applicant must present a promise of indefinite employment, while the employer must prove that there was no qualified US citizen for the position in question.

Facebook is accused of having circumvented this system by making recruitment advertisements for the positions concerned little visible.

These 2,600 job offers were not published on Facebook's HR site.

The social network preferred to place ads on a job portal and in the print version of the

newspaper

.

Applications had to be sent by mail.

According to the Ministry of Justice, more than 80% of these positions have not received any application, while in normal times, a small ad posted on the Facebook site attracts an average of a hundred applicants.

"

" commented Eric Dreiband, civil rights officer in the ministry, quoted in the communicated.

Trump hostile to certain work visas

The government of Donald Trump, which has made the fight against immigration one of its markers, has tried several times recently to restrict access to H-1B visas but has met with failures in the courts.

The lawsuits announced Thursday come two days after a setback by the authorities on the issue: a California court ruled in favor of Silicon Valley companies angry at the freeze on work visas decided in June by the tenant of the White House.

Read also: Setback for the Trump administration in California on the visa freeze

Donald Trump, resorting to anti-migration rhetoric, announced the freezing of green cards and certain work visas, including the H-1Bs widely used in the IT and digital sector.

He then assured that he wanted to help American workers, faced with the sharp rise in unemployment linked to the epidemic.

His decree sparked an outcry from bosses of industry giants like Google and Apple, and legal action from organizations like the American Chamber of Commerce and the Bay Area Council.

A judge ruled on Tuesday to suspend two government rules that would have forced companies to pay more for employees hired with H1-B visas and to restrict the types of jobs that qualify for that visa.

In particular, the plaintiffs argued that in the San Francisco Bay area, between 40% and 45% of technology companies are founded by immigrant entrepreneurs.