DOJ Says Cloudera Built a Closed Hiring Door
The Justice Department has sued Cloudera Inc., saying the Silicon Valley firm did not just prefer foreign visa holders, it allegedly built a hiring process that kept American workers on the sidewalk. According to the Civil Rights Division, the company used a separate application system for certain tech jobs that was designed to reject outside emails, which is a neat little trick if your goal is to talk about equal opportunity while doing the opposite. The government says some U.S. applicants followed the posted instructions only to get bounce-back messages saying their applications could not be processed.
PERM Rules Are Not a Suggestion
The lawsuit says Cloudera was also using the PERM labor certification process to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency while failing to make a real good-faith effort to recruit qualified Americans first. That matters because PERM is supposed to test the market, not stage a one-act play where the ending is already written. The Justice Department says employers must certify, under penalty of perjury, that they are not discriminating on the basis of citizenship or other protected traits, and it argues Cloudera broke that promise by steering jobs away from U.S. workers while setting aside those roles for visa holders.
What the Government Wants
The DOJ is asking a court to stop the hiring practices, fine the company for each affected worker, and order back pay for Americans who were shut out of the process. It may also seek other remedies the judge thinks fit, which is government-speak for the bill may get larger if the facts keep behaving badly. The case is part of the Trump administration’s Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which says it is targeting companies that unlawfully favor temporary visa workers over American citizens and has already led to ten settlements since being relaunched.
Old Lobbying, New Optics
Cloudera also has some history here. In 2017, it joined dozens of other major companies in an amicus brief opposing President Trump’s temporary travel ban on certain refugees and visa holders, arguing that the policy hurt business and hiring. That was then, when corporate PR was very concerned about access to global talent. Now the Justice Department says the company was running its own hiring system in a way that undercut American workers, which is the kind of plot twist that makes the whole “we just need the best people” slogan sound a bit too polished.
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