Facebook To Pay $14.25 Million For Favoring Immigrant Employees Against US Citizens, Experts Argue Settlement Discourages Hiring High-Skilled Immigrants

Facebook Inc (FB.O) has agreed to pay up to $14.25 million to settle civil claims by the U.S. government that the social media company discriminated against American workers and violated federal recruitment rules, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, the Reuters reported.

According to the report, the Facebook confirmed the two related settlements announced by the Justice Department and Labor Department. The Justice Department last December filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook of giving hiring preferences to temporary workers including those who hold H-1B visas that let companies temporarily employ foreign workers in certain specialty occupations. Such visas are widely used by tech companies.

However, an article by Stuart Anderson in Forbes argued that the DOJ legal settlement is discouraging for tech companies’ hiring of high-skilled immigrants.

According to the Forbes report, the U.S. government can force a company to pay millions of dollars in fines even if the employer complies with Department of Labor (DOL) rules on sponsoring employment-based immigrants. That is the message companies will take from the legal settlement between Facebook and the Justice (DOJ) and Labor Departments.

Kristen Clarke, assistant U.S. attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, called the agreement with Facebook historic.

“It represents by far the largest civil penalty the Civil Rights Division has ever recovered in the 35-year history of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination provision,” Clarke said in a call with reporters, referring to a key U.S. immigration law that bars discrimination against workers because of their citizenship or immigration status, the Reuters report said.

The case centered on Facebook’s use of the so-called permanent labor certification, called the PERM program.

The U.S. government said that Facebook refused to recruit or hire American workers for jobs that had been reserved for temporary visa holders under the PERM program. It also accused Facebook of “potential regulatory recruitment violations,” Reuters reported.

Facebook will pay a civil penalty under the settlement of $4.75 million, plus up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of what the government called discriminatory hiring practices.

“While we strongly believe we met the federal government’s standards in our permanent labor certification (PERM) practices, we’ve reached agreements to end the ongoing litigation and move forward with our PERM program,” Reurters reported quoting a Facebook spokesperson. “continue our focus on hiring the best builders from both the U.S. and around the world,” he added.

The settlements come at a time when Facebook is facing increasing U.S. government scrutiny over other business practices.

Facebook this month faced anger from U.S. lawmakers after former company employee and whistle blower Frances Haugen accused it of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety. Haugen has turned over thousands of documents to congressional investigators amid concerns that Facebook has harmed children’s mental health and has stoked societal divisions.

The company has denied any wrongdoing.

In Tuesday’s settlements, the Justice Department said that Facebook used recruitment practices designed to deter U.S. workers such as requiring applications to be submitted only by mail, refusing to consider American workers who applied for positions and hiring only temporary visa holders.

The Labor Department this year conducted audits of Facebook’s pending PERM applications and uncovered other concerns about the company’s recruitment efforts.

“Facebook is not above the law,” U.S. Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda told reporters, adding that the Labor Department is “committed to ensuring that the PERM process is not misused by employers – regardless of their size and reach.”