EEOC Acting Chair Vows to Protect American Workers from Anti-American Bias

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Acting Chair Andrea Lucas announced “The EEOC is putting employers and other covered entities on notice: if you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop. The law applies to you, and you are not above the law. The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers.”

Rigorously enforcing existing—but sometimes under-enforced—labor and employment laws is one key to shifting the economic incentives of businesses and workers. The EEOC will help deter illegal migration and reduce the abuse of legal immigration programs by increasing enforcement of employment antidiscrimination laws against employers that illegally prefer non-American workers, as well as against staffing agencies and other agents that unlawfully comply with client companies’ illegal preferences against American workers.

As previously announced, one of Lucas’s priorities for compliance, investigations, and litigation is protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination.

“Unlawful bias against American workers, in violation of Title VII, is a large-scale problem in multiple industries nationwide,” Lucas said. “Many employers have policies and practices preferring illegal aliens, migrant workers, and visa holders or other legal immigrants over American workers—in direct violation of federal employment law prohibiting national origin discrimination. Cracking down on this type of unlawful discrimination will shift employer incentives, decreasing demand for illegal alien workers and decreasing abuse of the United States’ legal immigration system.”

Congress tasked the EEOC with enforcing federal employment antidiscrimination laws, like Title VII’s prohibition of national origin discrimination, which the agency does by investigating and, in some cases, suing private employers for Title VII violations. Additionally, the EEOC works collaboratively with other federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor on labor and employment issues that overlap with immigration-related law enforcement.

The EEOC has a track record of investigating and prosecuting unlawful discrimination against American workers, but according to Lucas, “Given the scale and scope of this unlawful discrimination, there is room for enhanced investigation and enforcement by the EEOC and in collaboration with other federal agencies.”

Under Acting Chair Lucas, the EEOC is committed to ensuring employers and workers better understand the even-handed protections provided to all workers by Title VII’s prohibition against national origin discrimination. Although Title VII’s national origin nondiscrimination requirement generally means that employers cannot prefer American workers, it equally means that employers cannot prefer non-American workers and disfavor Americans.

“To help educate the public and deter unlawful conduct, it is important for the EEOC to cut to the chase when describing a frequent type of discrimination against which we repeatedly have taken enforcement action,” Lucas said. “For example, the agency frequently has recovered multi-million-dollar monetary awards for large multi-racial classes of black, white, and Asian workers in national origin discrimination cases. The common, but often unspoken, characteristic that tied these victims together? All were American workers.”