Epik Solutions, a California technology recruiting company, has been fined $71,916 as part of a settlement agreement with the Justice Department on charges of preferring to recruit foreign H-1B visa holders over U.S. workers.
Apart from civil penalties to the United States for alleged violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), it will undergo training, revise its employment policies, and refrain from placing job advertisements that unlawfully exclude U.S. workers from employment opportunities, according to a DoJ release.
“A top priority of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is protecting American workers from unlawful discrimination in favor of foreign visa workers,” said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon. “Companies engaging in such discrimination are on notice that the days of the federal government looking the other way on American workforce protection are over.”
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According to its website, Epik Solutions provides AI-powered business management software platforms to multiple industry sectors, such as banking, energy, biotechnology, education, and even the federal government.
The company boasts partnerships with big names such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google Cloud, Salesforce, and Oracle, among others.
Epik Solutions said that although it has cooperated with the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) investigation, it does not acknowledge any wrongdoing or admit to any legal conclusions put forth by the Special Counsel, according to the signed agreement.
The settlement is the first since the department re-launched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative to enforce the law against companies that unlawfully discriminate against American workers in favor of foreign visa workers, DoJ said.
Originally launched in 2017, the initiative prohibits hiring, firing, and recruiting based on citizenship, immigration status, and national origin, protecting not just U.S. citizens, but also naturalized U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents, refugees, and other asylum-grantees, according to DoJ website.
Foreign H-1B visa holders are considered temporary workers hired for expertise in specialized designated fields, such as technology, engineering, science, healthcare, and law, and typically hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In recent years Indians have cornered nearly three fourths of annual quota of 85,000 H-1B visas, including 20,000 for those with master’s degree from U.S. universities, used by major U.S. companies to hire foreign workers.