US govt sues Facebook, alleges bias against American workers in favour of H-1B visa holders

The US government has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, accusing the social media giant of “intentional and widespread” violations of the laws to discriminate against American workers and favour H-1B visa holders.

H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Most of the nearly 600,000 H-1B visa holders are from India and China.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by the Justice Department, alleges that Facebook refused to recruit, consider or hire qualified and available US workers for over 2,600 positions and instead, reserved for temporary visa holders it sponsored for permanent work authorisation (or “green cards”) in connection with the permanent labour certification process (PERM).