‘NOT ACCEPTABLE’: Trump Admin ‘Clamping Down’ on Foreigners Taking American Jobs

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas is seeking to prevent Americans losing their jobs to foreign workers.

“Most people understand that you can’t discriminate against a foreign worker, but they don’t understand that American workers could constitute a national origin,” said Lucas, who oversees the federal government’s employment discrimination agency. “It’s one of those things where discrimination is happening in plain sight, and people just don’t understand their rights.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the law that established the EEOC, bars discriminatory job advertisements that say the employer prefers or requires applicants from a particular country. Lucas said she will come out with a provision soon “clamping down” on job ads that exclude Americans.

“I think it’s rampant,” she told The Daily Signal. “I think that there is a really, really big problem, and it’s another example of where, because there’s just been lopsided discussion about what the law covers.”

For instance, Apple had to pay a $25 million settlement in 2023 after it was found that the tech giant required paper applications for positions it wanted to go to foreign workers, and the company did not advertise them on its own job website.

“It’s one of those things where discrimination is happening in plain sight, and people just don’t understand their rights,” she continued. “So we’re really trying to push back and educate people.”

The commission is part of a whole-government effort led by the Department of Labor called “Project Firewall,” to fight H1-B visa abuses.

“American workers are the centerpiece of President Trump’s agenda and protecting all Americans from the right to be free from discrimination,” she said, “and that includes when companies want to prefer foreign workers.”

Cases of discrimination against foreign workers occur in every industry, she said.

“We see it when a company that might have been launched in another country, comes to our country and decides to open locations here,” she said. “They may not realize that it’s not acceptable to have all of their executives or most of their employees be from their home country.”

“That’s unlawful. We see it in farm workers or frontline workers where people will try to segregate workplaces and only hire Hispanic workers, perhaps because they think that they’re going to be either illegal aliens or monolingual and therefore more vulnerable,” she continued. “It can come up in really almost every workplace from really white collar tech companies to frontline service industries, manufacturing.”

Lucas is interested in protecting workers in all of these situations.

Several previous administrations have investigated worker discrimination, but Lucas believes they’ve only scratched the surface.

“Thus far we’ve had a couple, with a one big million-plus dollar recovery for something that was launched in the Biden administration and then came to fruition in the Trump administration involving preference for Japanese chefs in a location in Guam, and American workers were harmed there,” Lucas said.

“You see bits and pieces, but I think the level of H-1B-related enforcement, we’re really just scratching the surface,” she continued. “There’s a lot more to be done, and I’m really encouraged by the whole of government effort that Project Firewall involves.”

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