Biden’s weaponized DOJ attacks SpaceX for hiring Americans
Washington Examiner
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The same presidential administration responsible for an explosion of illegal immigrant child labor is now suing an American company, founded by a legal immigrant, for only hiring American citizens.
The credibility of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice as an objective enforcer of federal law is already in tatters, but his weaponization of the agency now against Elon Musk’s SpaceX is nevertheless shocking.
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Late last week, the Justice Department announced it had filed a lawsuit against SpaceX for discriminating against asylees and refugees. The lawsuit alleges that from September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX refused to hire any asylees or refugees and discouraged any from even applying.
Musk, a legal immigrant from South Africa who became a U.S. citizen in 2002, has a well-established history of hiring legal foreign talent at his other companies. Somewhere between 25% and 30% of Tesla’s engineering staff, for example, are not U.S. citizens.
SpaceX is different, however, because it designs, manufactures, and operates rockets and spacecraft, two items that are on the United States Munitions List and therefore governed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which is the implementing regulation for the Arms Export Control Act.
Under the ITAR, companies that even handle information relating to items on the USML must either hire only “U.S. persons” or seek special visas for each foreign national who handles relevant information. Sanctions for violating ITAR are severe and include personal criminal and civil liability for employees involved. Even accidental ITAR violations can cost companies hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense.
“U.S. persons” is a technical legal term that includes both American citizens and aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence. Asylees or refugees both fit this definition. So technically SpaceX can hire them without getting special permission from the government. But most companies in the defense sector have identical conservative hiring practices as SpaceX. The stakes for even accidental violations are just too high.
The federal government, including the Department of Justice, has multiple job listings that say only U.S. citizens can apply. Would you like to be a paralegal for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the office that is suing Musk? If so, you should know that the online job posting on the DOJ’s own website says you must be a U.S. citizen to apply. Will Biden’s Civil Rights Division get around to suing itself?
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Musk has been an outspoken critic of Biden and of the weaponization of the Justice Department in particular. Considering how widespread and accepted the practice of only recruiting U.S. citizens is in sectors that must comply with ITAR, it looks like Musk’s SpaceX has been singled out for prosecution, especially since Musk’s Tesla, which is not subject to ITAR, readily hires foreign nationals of all kinds.
At a time when retailers across the country are fighting organized criminal theft rings, the DOJ should concentrate its limited resources on real threats to public safety instead of prosecuting patriotic companies that hire Americans.