The Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) for discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring. The lawsuit alleges that, from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Asylees was not a word I was familiar with until today
It’s a busy day for xenophobic billionaires!
Hang on, ain’t it a federal law that if you are employed govt aerospace program (which spacex is part of cause its NASA funded contractor) that only American born people can work for them ? Came up in the past and they responded quoting that the Govt wont let them.
From the link:
In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as “green card holders.” Export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions. Moreover, asylees’ and refugees’ permission to live and work in the United States does not expire, and they stand on equal footing with U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents under export control laws. Under these laws, companies like SpaceX can hire asylees and refugees for the same positions they would hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. And once hired, asylees and refugees can access export-controlled information and materials without additional government approval, just like U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
So SpaceX blatantly lied hoping no-one else would notice.
uuuuuhhhh, TIL Must be a new thing cause i do remember is 100% was a thing to protect aerospace secrets.
It’s not new. Refugees and people with asylum are considered US persons, it’s literally written into the law (ITAR) protecting aerospace secrets.
It’s easy to misinterpret the law because it states you can only hire U.S. Persons without requiring approval. And naturally people would assume U.S. Persons means citizens. But the term also includes permanent residents, asylees, and refugees.
So SpaceX can’t hire immigrants on a temporary visa without a lot of effort. But refugees and asylees are explicitly allowed to work at such companies.
I did some reading up on this as it’s fairly interesting and I haven’t heard about this before. I found this article and it sounds like it’s less than $200k fine and two years monitoring. If I had to guess they might have used that as insurance against leaks of their innovative technology, drone ships and return to pad rockets, satellite technology etc. At least that’s what I hope as I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Also potential sabotage. They also have government contracts with military I’m sure. Maybe it’s easier to risk a lawsuit for a few years of mitigating those risks. Just something to think about.
a·sy·lee
/əˌsīˈlē/
noun
plural noun: asylees
a person who is seeking or has been granted political asylum.
