Apple will pay a $25 million settlement for claims by the Department of Justice that the company illegally favored immigrant workers over U.S. citizens and green card holders for certain jobs, the agency said on Thursday.
The DOJ said in a statement that Apple did not recruit U.S. citizens or permanent residents for jobs that were eligible for a federal program allowing employers to sponsor immigrant workers for green cards, in violation of a federal law that bars discrimination based on citizenship.
The settlement is the largest ever involving claims of discrimination based on citizenship, the DOJ said. It requires Apple to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and $18.25 million to an unspecified number of affected workers.
Apple denies any intentional wrongdoing, but admitted in a statement that it had “unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard.”
“We have implemented a robust remediation plan to comply with the requirements of various government agencies as we continue to hire American workers and grow in the U.S.,” the company said.
The DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights section (IER) discovered that when an Apple employee holding a temporary visa status requested to become a permanent employee, Apple departed from its standard recruiting process.
Specifically, Apple did not advertise permanent job openings that were eligible for the program, known as the permanent labor certification (PERM) program, on its website as it routinely does for other positions. In addition, the company required applicants for those jobs to mail paper applications even though it usually permits electronic applications, the department said.
“These less effective recruitment procedures deterred U.S. applicants from applying and nearly always resulted in zero or very few mailed applications that Apple considered for PERM-related job positions, which allowed Apple to fill the positions with temporary visa holders,” the department said.
“Apple also failed to consider certain internal applicants to PERM-related positions if they only submitted their application electronically as opposed to mailing an application.”
The DOJ did not specify which Apple jobs were affected by the recruitment procedures or how Apple may have benefited from them.
According to the IER, Apple’s employment law violations occurred from January 2018 to the end of 2019.
Foreign labor can often be cheaper than hiring U.S. workers, and immigrants who depend on their employers for green card sponsorship are seen as less likely to leave for a different or better-paying job.
Along with the payout, Apple agreed to align its recruiting for PERM jobs with its normal practices. The company was ordered to submit a revised draft of its PERM recruitment process within 90 days with the aim to make it more accessible and transparent and to ensure that it does not discriminate against any applicant based on citizenship status.
Reuters contributed to this report.