> In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as “green card holders.” Export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions.
This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. ITAR restrictions, for example, prohibit foreigners from using or testing night vision equipment (even on US soil). If a team is hiring a rocket engineer, and it's a violation of ITAR for them to see technical data on SpaceX's rocket program then it's effectively impossible for a non-US person to perform in this role. Perhaps SpaceX could have phrased things differently, like "this job requires access to ITAR-controlled technical material..."
Now, as to whether or not asylees are able to access ITAR restricted material seems a bit more complicated. Searching around the internet it seems that only some asylees are able to access ITAR material: https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-pe...
Asylum seekers and refugees are U.S. persons under current law. ITAR treats them exactly the same as a U.S. citizen or green card holder, even though they are foreigners. So the DOJ action is as a result of SpaceX job postings that excluded some non-citizens who are still U.S. persons, which is unlawful discrimination by country of origin or citizenship.
From the link: "U.S. person means a person (as defined in §120.14 of this part) who is a lawful permanent resident as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)." The section cited for Protected Individuals includes refugees and asylum seekers.
Honestly, this is a pretty common mistake in the aerospace industry. Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR, and don't realize that U.S. persons includes refugees and asylum seekers in addition to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it.
I don't think this is a huge scandal or anything. I suspect someone at SpaceX wrote the language for the job posting without fully understanding all the permitted categories in export control law, and that language went a long time without anyone noticing the problem. The DOJ will sue them and win (SpaceX might not even fight it) and they'll pay a fine and have the correct language. I really doubt someone at SpaceX made a deliberate decision to discriminate against refugees and asylum seekers.
Edit: I read the complaint in more detail, and it's really weird that the DOJ alleged this discrimination happened from 2018 to 2020. SpaceX was a huge company at that point and really ought to have had compliance/HR/Legal that would have caught this. So IDK, maybe there actually is more to the story.
> Asylum seekers and refugees are U.S. persons under current law.
Just a nit: there is a difference between an asylum seeker (someone who has made an application for asylum) and an asylee (someone whose application for asylum has been approved). Only the latter are US persons for ITAR purposes.
Given the long waiting times for asylum applications (multiple years), the low approval rate (~25%) and the fact that asylees can apply for permanent residence after 1 year, I would expect the number of asylees to be dramatically smaller than the number of asylum seekers.
> Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it.
I would expect that most people wouldn’t be too familiar with the ins and outs of “who we can hire”, and that that knowledge would often be concentrated in a compliance unit or units (likely in HR and Legal, at least) that would be primarily responsible.
I do think its a pretty big deal, though, if those compliance units aren’t doing their jobs.
I'm pretty sure at a normal old school company the CEO would have a discussion with legal ending with him saying, just make this go away as quietly as possible.
> The DOJ will sue them and win (SpaceX might not even fight it) and they'll pay a fine and have the correct language.
It seems weird that they're suing them, and making such a big splash about it. Like you said it's doubtful they did this intentionally. I would think that some sort of out-of-court agreement would be made without going to trial.
It feels like there's political interest in prosecuting Musk companies, even if the lawsuits aren't very meritorious.
Not a fanboy, but I mean listen to any of NPRs coverage of EVs. They almost never mention Tesla. Breathlessly claiming that EVs are gaining traction, only talking about <1 year entrants. Squirming, talking about how charging networks need improvement. Barely whispering that Ford et. al are trying to buy their way into Tesla’s network.
It’s clear to me that without Tesla, warts and all, very little of the current EV adoption would be happening this soon.
I thought Ford et al were being bribed by Tesla to use their network, as all new EVs sold after 202X cannot use a proprietary connector, which means it has to use the same connector as at least two other companies, to get subsidies. Same for new charging station subsidies.
> This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct.
I think it is practically correct though, if you look at what the DOJ is specifically claiming. They are not claiming that every foreign person is exempt from export control restrictions. They are only claiming specifically that refugees and asylees are exempt, and this is what the lawsuit is about. Based on my understanding of the INA I think they're right, because refugees and asylees are generally put in the same category as permanent residents.
By the way, SpaceX's updated job descriptions are consistent with this interpretation. They now say:
"To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR"
Sure, they were told back in 2020 they were being investigated for this, updating their boilerplate for compliance with the law is just about the minimal level of compliance.
Compliance with the law seems like a fairly binary thing. They (as argued) weren't and now they are. Do you have a specific way in mind that they should become more compliant?
Updating the job postings addresses "SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying", but does not mean they have resolved the other half: "refused to hire or consider them".
I'm just saying that if you're going to say you comply you'll at least update those kinds of statements. You can't claim at all to comply if you're still saying "citizens and green card holders only."
That could easily be a veneer of compliance, where you're still rejecting all those similarly situated candidates, or rejecting them at comparatively higher rates, but just doing so without explicitly stating their status as the reason. That would be much harder to prove but not actually complying with the law.
Not everyone with everything. But the HR department of a billion dollar company should be fully comfortable with federal regulations regarding HR. I don't see how that's remotely controversial.
Do we really want to condone this legalistic regulatory cancer, where we now have to suffer even more boilerplate drivel being copypasta'd into the job postings? This is how we've ended up with at least 7 disclaimers on everything we buy.
I'd find the press release much more compelling if DOJ focused on actual harm actual people suffered, and dropped the handwaving about people being discouraged by simplistically-worded job postings. Generally if you're in a narrow corner case like ITAR-eligible but not citizen or permanent resident, you know to read through simple phrasings as stand-ins for the actual requirements.
> Y'all literally think following the law is controversial.
There's a lot of tension between those two statements. How is your "dodge taxes" any different from "follow government incentives"?
A few years back I got a pile of tax credits for replacing my home windows and garage door, and as a result paid a lot less in income tax that year. Am I a tax dodger? Or was I doing exactly what the policy makers wanted me to?
When corporations shuffle around their finances such that the tax codes extracts less money from them, are they being evil? If you think that this outcome is bad, I think your beef is more with the legislators and tax bureaucrats than it is with the corporations.
But follow the chain of this argument back up to the top. I was responding to a statement implying that everyone should have the resources to thoroughly understand the vast mountain of federal regulations.
You're objecting to my implication that companies should have sufficient resources to understand tax incentives - a tiny subset of federal regulation. Yet at the same time, you're supporting the idea that companies should invest sufficiently to understand a larger body of regulation, indeed a vast superset of what my statement implies.
Is that an unreasonable expectation for a multi-billion dollar firm with a proportional legal department that regularly ignites explosives on public property?
> In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as “green card holders.”
I would say it's totally fair if you're trying to discriminate based upon said regulations.
This verge article[1] lays out some of the timeline, and it seems that even a week after the investigation opened Elon tweeted about how at least a green card was required[2]. At best it feels like they were not interpreting the law in good faith.
No, you're right, it could also be years of ignorance from multiple levels of SpaceX combined with an obstinance to not consider changing their position even in the light of a federal investigation.
An asylee is someone whose application for asylum has been approved. The hack in which you cross the border illegally and then apply for asylum does get you a work permit, but won't get you one of these jobs.
I can't imagine this isn't going to disappear when a bunch of national security suits walk into the judges chamber.
SpaceX is such a strategic advantage for the US military. If starship achieves anything close to its orbital payload cost reduction, it effectively means the US owns space and orbit.
1 - compare the govt and spacex track records. does that really seem wise?
2 - we can't really nationalize stuff, constitutionally. it's been limited to voluntary bailouts of last resort (aig, amtrak) which i think we should stop
The government let people on Wall Street keep their RSU style compensation after 2008. It's not like most engineers can sell their RSUs except on quarterly redemption days. Or the government could otherwise match the compensation. It has a lot of money.
SpaceX employees can't sell their RSUs period, since it's a private company. They're counting on a big payday at an IPO that will never happen if it gets nationalised.
They're just going to pay a fine and agree/be enjoined not to do it anymore (as others have noted, their job ads already now mention these categories as being eligible).
According to the complaint, if I’m understanding this press release correctly, all SpaceX applicants were required to be citizens or permanent residents, even those without access to controlled items.
> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees.
The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. Doubly so since one of their explicit concerns is having foreign agents steal their trade secrets. And therefore they have to be guarding against intentional attempts to access what your job role says you don't have access to.
Given that, it makes a lot of sense for them to simply require ITAR compliance in all roles.
I've worked in or with companies doing mixed ITAR and non-ITAR work for my whole career, they've all managed it pretty well. If you have competent HR they mark people as ITAR-eligible or not. If you have competent facilities people, they install prox card readers or cipher locks for physical access control (if it's a shared space, if you can have separate buildings may not be necessary). And if you have competent IT folks, they use standard access control mechanisms to segregate ITAR data and ensure only ITAR folks (really, this is easy because it should just be project folks) can access it.
Is it a pain? Yes. But honestly other than HR tracking ITAR/non-ITAR people it's things everyone does already. You have physical access controls to keep people out of areas that don't need to be in them, and you use digital access controls for the same in your data systems today. So one extra group has to track one extra flag (ITAR/non-ITAR) and otherwise everything works as it already works.
This conversation is sort of beside the point. SpaceX doesn't hire any non-ITAR workers, and the DOJ has no problem with that - lots of aerospace companies don't hire non-US persons for regulatory reasons. The allegation is that they excluded asylum seekers and refugees who are U.S. persons
And what would be the benefit ? Which roles in SpaceX does not require access to ITAR data ? Would the world really be that much better if SpaceX could hire refugee non-ITAR HR people or janitors ? It is simply not worth it.
What is SpaceX is worried about a lack of current internal control to segment ITAR from non-ITAR? That seems like a plausible concern on the part of SpaceX.
I think you're avoiding the question posed by GP, to be honest.
Labor laws are arbitrary legal definitions. This lawsuit is the government enforcing labor laws. Notice they are NOT suing to force SpaceX to hire people non-ITAR individuals but rather to enforce the arbitrary legal definition of a US citizen.
> For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes.
They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business.
If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
>If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
Why? And why the smarmy elitist discrimination and condescension towards janitors or cafeteria workers? Why would they not be an important part of an organization, professionals capable of getting background checks, appropriate training, and being trusted to keep their mouths shut too?
ITAR isn't about security though, at least not the way you and GP seem to be thinking. Classified information is an entirely different kettle of fish. Any American HNer can head on over to Amazon or wherever else and order a FLIR One for a few hundred bucks with free shipping. Also said FLIR One:
>"The information contained in this page pertains to products that may be subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 C.F.R. Sections 120-130) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) (15 C.F.R. Sections 730-774)"
ITAR covers a massive array of information and tech available off the shelf. SpaceX definitely will be segmenting heavily stuff specifically for the DOD, but their basic rocketry isn't some classified military project. At most they have useful trade secrets they want to protect but even that probably isn't that critical. They rightfully care about having a good, open, fast startup-like development culture for the rocket work, with animated cooler discussions and napkins being scribbled on during lunch.
But access to those physical assets is probably also controlled with a list of who is allowed to access it. A list that it would be trivial to filter by ITAR status. If not, I have a quick vacation to take.
I'm not sure we're seeing this the same at all. ITAR restrictions cover a whole lot of things. I don't see why ITAR controlled assets would have a "list of who is allowed to access it". In fact, I bet that list doesn't exist. In my experience in the aerospace industry, awareness of ITAR restrictions was the personal responsibility of the employee. For most things falling under ITAR control, there was no or little protections or controls beyond this. For example: "this spreadsheet of components obviously cannot be sent to our IT subcontractors in India."
The discussion was about physical assets. I'm willing to bet areas of SpaceX with interesting physical prototypes have controlled access - and that access can be limited to US persons. If that's not the case, I plan to go on vacation to walk through SpaceX and play with their toys.
This is where I think the disconnect. ITAR includes many things much more mundane than cutting edge spacecraft prototypes. It’s still ITAR whether it’s strapped onto a prototype for the first time or on its 800th flight in production.
I think the disconnect is that I intended it more as a statement that SpaceX had physical locks (and/or some forms of access control) on their physical stuff. They have allow lists for various areas. So, at a rough level they can say ITAR hardware is in section 5, so they can only allow people in the intersection of "need section 5 access" and "US persons" in. Because the list is almost certainly computer managed.
It's kind of a joke that if they don't have locks I would play with the prototypes. Just because that's what I would seek out. But yes, ITAR can cover the boring and probably mundane as well.
Sure, but shouldn't the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? It seems silly that it's illegal to discriminate against some categories of non-citizens and illegal not to discriminate against other categories of non-citizens.
> Sure, but shouldn’t the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction?
That’s definitely an argument Tesla might want to make to Congress and the State Department (as the relevant regulatory authority for ITAR) as to what the law and regulation should be.
“We think a different policy than that embodied in the current law would be better policy” is less useful as an argument to escape the legal consequences of violating the existing law.
It looks like SpaceX may have messed up in terms of how only some, but not all, refugees/asylees are barred by ITAR. Reading deeper into 22 CFR § 120.62 [0] and linked regs shows a complex situation, but that's no excuse for SpaceX at this point who are plenty big enough to have good lawyers on this. But that is separate from your assertion about those who are restricted by ITAR:
>The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
This is way too casual a statement. At a company like that there won't necessarily be anything that doesn't potentially involve ITAR short of serious company reorganization, which is serious-business regulation and actively enforced. To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. Etc.
At this point SpaceX might have some roles that can be segmented safely, completely firewalled from the rest of the organization. Tier 1 Starlink customer support perhaps. But it's not trivial when dealing with serious restricted tech to just say "oh these roles do not handle ITAR", because it's not about handling. Read "§ 120.56 Release" [1]:
(a) Release. Technical data is released through:
(1) Visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person;
(2) Oral or written exchanges with foreign persons of technical data in the United States or abroad;
(3) The use of access information to cause or enable a foreign person, including yourself, to access, view, or possess unencrypted technical data; or
(4) The use of access information to cause technical data outside of the United States to be in unencrypted form.
It's quite broad.
So yes, if SpaceX incorrectly excluded a group of people not covered by ITAR, they screwed up and will likely face some sort of fines/consent decree. But that doesn't mean it's trivial to then go and hire people who are covered by ITAR.
> To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations.
As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler.
Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.
>You seem to be confusing ITAR compliance with some sort of security classification
This is exactly it, that may be the source of their posts? Being covered by ITAR has nothing to do with whether an American could just go mail order it online let alone chat about it. As a regular American civilian with zero government clearance of any kind, I own a bunch of ITAR controlled stuff. As a category it covers a pretty wide array of technology even when it doesn't seem to be in any way particularly sensitive. All of my suppressors for example are subject to export control, or NVG or FLIRs even when it's ancient tech everyone in the world has. Apparently so can things like optics. It wasn't that long ago that the US government tried to insist that mere encryption was a munition subject to controls!
I thought that SpaceX, due to the nature of their work (rockets) were specifically prohibited from hiring non-citizens?
Edit: seems like the DOJ is claiming that that is not the case. Weird…so this is basically going to boil down to each side arguing their interpretation of a regulation.
Can’t say this doesn’t smell just a little political.
>Can’t say this doesn’t smell just a little political.
The President of the United States very publicly called for Musk and his companies to be investigated back in November of ‘22. Ironically, this was because of supposed relationships with other countries.
So he deserves investigation due to foreign business relationships, then gets sued for not hiring (edge-case) foreigners to build state of the art rocket technology. Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song.
Both laws in this case being related to business relationships with potential adversaries of the United States, with the Executive branch straddling arguably opposing public positions. But you already understood that and you’re pretending that the irony isn’t there because you don’t like Musk, right?
No I really don’t see any conflict between “don’t collaborate with officials of a foreign government” and “don’t discourage foreign-born people from applying for jobs that you offer.”
I was noting the irony of it all. If a billionaire gets publicly called out by the president to be investigated for potential foreign influence during his acquisition of low-stakes social media Company X, one typically wouldn’t expect the DoJ to charge them for NOT hiring non-citizens in their high-stakes state of the art rocket Company Y less than a year later. That sequence of events can be ironic without technically being legally contradictory.
But again, you already understood all that. You’re just being a pedantic little geek because you don’t like Musk.
I was wondering about that too. They are restricted from exporting the knowledge and are restricted (ITAR, EAR, FARS/DFARS, etc.) in some roles to use non-US citizens, and not even "lawful permanent residents" are allowed to take them. (Background 19 in DoJ filling) Export means sharing the information with non-US citizen or green card holder, irrelevant where the action takes place (i.e. the non-US recipient can be in Richmond, VA; it is the citizenship/green card that matters not the location).
It is possible that the roles identified by the DOJ are not under these restriction.
That said, how is this going to be resolved with the compliance requirements
Per the website linked, asylees and refugees do not come under the export control act, as opposed to citizens of other nations. The timing of the lawsuit does seem interesting though.
It’s not citizenship (otherwise asylees, refugees, and even permanent resident aliens would be excluded.)
A “foreign person” is defined in ITAR (22 CFR Sec. 120.63), by reference to two sections of immigration law in Title 8 of the US Code, as someone who is none of the following: a US citizen, a lawful permanent resident, an asylee or refugee, a person lawfully admitted for permanent residency (I haven’t done the analysis to see if this is distinct from “lawful permanent resident” or if its overlap with different language between the categories referenced from different parts of Title 8 of the US Code), a person lawfully admitted for certain classes of temporary residency.
I dunno, if the people they are discriminating against are “US persons” and not “foreign persons” under ITAR, then the whole ITAR argument for discrimination, whether its direct coverage or some kind of indirect risk creating something that Tesla wants to try to argue is a bona fide occupational qualification justifying discrimination, is cut off at the root.
I suppose a “long time” is relative. I don’t have a Twitter account and haven’t cared much about what he does for about…3 months or so? with a 24 hour news cycle that fees like an eternity.
I thought gp was alluding to something within the last few days.
SpaceX is prohibited from hiring non-US-persons (for at least some roles.) US Persons includes all US citizens, and several other groups of people. It is also illegal to use the differences between types of US Persons in hiring decisions. The lawsuit is because SpaceX wrote US citizens instead of US Persons. They now list all categories of US Persons in their job listings (in response to this suit, most likely), so this is about past behavior and probably will be trivially settled for a fine.
There is also an active question of if the discrimination is still happening, in which case the governments goal is to prevent compliance only in the job listings.
No they shouldn't be discriminating based on citizenship. That unnecessarily limits their access to talent. There may be roles within SpaceX that require a security clearance and therefore require US citizenships, but the discrimination should be applied based on the role and not as a blanket company policy.
It's really, really hard to silo technical information in an organization against bad actors.
Like, do you really want to start papering over all your conference room doors so nobody can snap a photo of schematics while they walk by? Constantly police which Slack channels they are in? Make sure they can't look at a coworker's monitor?
Security against espionage is a defense-in-depth design, in the real world you can't just say "oh we have a single barrier — they won't be on Top Secret projects. problem solved."
> Like, do you really want to start papering over all your conference room doors so nobody can snap a photo of schematics while they walk by? Constantly police which Slack channels they are in? Make sure they can't look at a coworker's monitor?
Yes. Have separate buildings, separate Slack instances (don't use clouds if you don't want information smeared across the world), badge access, etc... it's difficult sure but don't tell me our poor military industrial complex can't afford it.
That works for companies with a broad product range. Apple works that way.
But SpaceX work mostly funnels into a very few products, all of which are of some national security interest.
That doesn't cover what the DOJ is asking, because you can't separate closely linked roles into de-facto separate companies.
Like, are you saying the people writing blog posts, the legal team, even certain engineering specialties, are not allowed to ever interact with the engineers working on satellite encryption?
Operation Paperclip may have served us in the 1940s, but the CCP in 2023 does not play by the same rules as Nazi Germany. Their playbook specifically exploits the vulnerability of our anti-discrimination policies by pressuring otherwise-upstanding employees into subversive acts once they secure sensitive positions. Compromised employees are never held accountable when caught at anything because they immediately run back to China to avoid indictment and trial.
Using civilians as sleeper agents, and using our own policies against us as cover-- it's the perfect espionage program.
A friend with specific knowledge about these suits just informed me that these lawsuits are in fact incredibly common. Many large companies have multiple open audits with the feds at any given time over alleged discriminatory practices - in fact so many of them occur that there is a cap set for how many of them can be open at any given time. This is less political or specific than it appears at face value.
Because settlement happens after a lawsuit is brought? Settlement is a means of reaching agreement before a trial, and is encouraged by the court as to save the court resouces, if parties can work it out amongst themselves
There is such a point where money would exchange hands before a formal suit between two private actors. For instance, I might want to settle with you quickly and privately to avoid having to admit what I did.
The government, on the other hand, wants the publicity of having filed the suit to deter other companies from doing the same thing. I don't believe they frequently settle before filing a formal suit.
> Is there a point at which money would exchange hands before a formal suit is filed?
For a purely monetary resolution to avoid a lawsuit, yes, but in regulatory cases rather than disputes between private parties where such an outcome is often preferred to a lawsuit occurring, the government will often not be interested in such an outcome, and will instead prefer a consent decree with behavioral restrictions that have strong legal consequences. These have to have an actual active case, as they are are court orders to which both parties stipulate, not private agreements. (“Settlement” can cover either type of resolution.)
There are literally 1902 results for "discriminating" on the DOJ's press release search page, and they only go back as far as 2009. That's also for the ones they chose to publicize. I appreciate that you think this is unnecessary - I do too - but the facts don't bear in your favor.
The word "discrimination" also appears on this page 22 times: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp . This is only a precisely targeted case if we ignore all other cases like it, of which there are many.
maybe I need to read this again more carefully but I fail to see what SpaceX is doing wrong here.
This:
> Because SpaceX works with certain goods, software, technology and technical data (referred to here as export-controlled items), SpaceX must comply with export control laws and regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Export Administration Regulations. Under these regulations, asylees, refugees, lawful permanent residents, U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals working at U.S. companies can access export-controlled items without authorization from the U.S. government. Therefore, these laws do not require SpaceX to treat asylees and refugees differently than U.S. citizens or green card holders. Find more information here on how employers can avoid discrimination when complying with export control requirements.
Seems to be the issue.
But why would it be against the law for a US company to discriminate against someone without valid immigration status? I assume the issue here is a refugee has some authorization for lawful employment and SpaceX still doesn't want to hire them wholesale, hence the suit.
IMHO the United States' convoluted immigration and refugee policy is to blame. Why not triage everyone to being "legal permanent resident" and remove the distinction between refugee/asylee and other types of lawful residents? I'd need to read more but ultimately they're a lawful resident or not. What's the point of considering them a "refugee" if they're entitled to the same benefits as a lawful resident anyway? Either we trust them enough to be in this country and therefore be entitled to the benefits that entails, or not.
> The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate with respect to hiring, firing, or recruitment or referral for a fee, based upon an individual's citizenship or immigration status.
The Civil Rights Act also prohibits discrimination on national origin.
Obviously the CRA does not mean you have to hire blind people to be truck drivers. You do have to provide reasonable accommodation for jobs they can do. If you circumvent the reasonable accommodation requirement by eg barring people by immigration status for jobs where it is irrelevant, you're breaking the law.
I'm not saying they're not. I'm saying there doesn't need to be a distinction in capabilities. Asylees/refugees cannot do all the same things as permanent residents. This is the confusion and thus the reason for the actions SpaceX took.
But if they can't do all the same things, why not just only hire permanent residents? As an employer, especially SpaceX the intersection between the job responsibilities and capabilities creates unnecessary confusion. If you hire them to do X, which sometimes requires access to Y, but Y isn't something refugees are supposed to do, is it a shock they'd rather just hire people who can do everything?
It's a problem the state created for themselves. Suppose SpaceX took the other position and treated them equivalently. Then they'd be getting sued about how refugees are doing {some thing they're not supposed to} and how they should've conducted more due diligence.
in any case it seems like SpaceX err'd in the wholesale discouragement of refugees from applying. it didn't seem specific to role or responsibilities.
It's the "permanent" bit. Being an asylee or refugee isn't necessarily a permanent status - like if your home country gets out of a civil war or a coup leader ends the coup and goes into exile, you no longer need to fear for your life if you go back.
> If you are a refugee, you are required by law to apply for permanent resident status 1 year after being admitted to the United States in refugee status. If you are an asylee, you are not required to apply for permanent resident status after being granted asylum for 1 year.
And this happens. When I was in grad school I knew a Lithuanian refugee. He was a fellow student - came when he was younger (high school?), but still on a refugee status by the time he entered grad school. And at the time he was fighting off being sent back to Lithuania because apparently conditions had improved back there.
The real problem was that his parents and most of his family had obtained the green card by that point, and for whatever reason there were delays in processing him. So only he would be forced to return.
The law for immigration status in hiring is that you can't discriminate on the basis of it unless the government requires you to. The government's saying both that ITAR doesn't actually restrict asylees and refugees, and also that not being a "US person" under ITAR isn't really a bar that should count (you can get approval from the government for non-US persons to work on export-controlled stuff, or have them work on other things).
You can tell they're really hanging their hat on the first one, though: even if you say for simplicity you want to have only "US persons" under ITAR, that doesn't justify excluding asylees and refugees.
Among the evidence in the filing is, of course, an Elon Musk tweet, saying you need at least a green card to work at SpaceX.
Also, the numbers: over the course of about four years SpaceX hired exactly one asylee, and that one shortly after they were told they were under investigation.
Are there a large number of rocket scientists and/or communications experts in the asylum/refugee pool applying at Space-X? I'm not intending to be snarky, but my guess is the relative pool may not be that large. Of course there are lower-level jobs (janitorial, catering, etc) that may not require the same kinds of clearance.
All said, I can understand the mistake in terms of interpretation of the regulation.
I don't know how many people we're talking about. In absolute terms I'm sure it's not a huge number. The filing lists a few anecdotal cases.
Part of the complaint is also that they publicly stated that you need citizenship or a green card many times over the years, so there were probably people improperly deterred from applying at all.
For comparison: I searched for "DOJ sues for discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring -spacex" on google to see other companies' headlines for this:
- Microsoft
- Aero Precision
- Technology Hub
- KForce Tech
- Facebook
- Giant Food
- etc.
If there's a political angle here, I'm more inclined to believe that Democrat-lead exec branches lead to more employment discrimination enforcement thatn Republican-lead ones.
This seems politically motivated, rather than something in the pursuit of justice. If it was about justice, step one would be to send an official legal document, giving SpaceX authority to hire non US citizens.
This makes me lose faith in the justice system, as well as trust in the powers that be. This isn't justice, this is political. And unfortunately, it will even receive popular support, just because people simply don't personally like the CEO of the company.
To heck with truth and justice, let's tar and feather the Muskerino man!
This seems like an unreasonably convoluted rule. Why should citizens, permanent residents, asylees and refugees, but not visa holders be able to access export-controlled information? It seems almost guaranteed to trip up employers in visa-heavy industries.
Summary: SpaceX, a company that regularly handles Top Secret US Government Classified Satellites and ITAR Material, is being sued by the the US Government for not hiring... foreign nationals that aren't allowed to handle Top Secret US Government Classified Satellites and ITAR Material.
I probably have to take training classes every year as a hiring manager about what I can and cannot ask in the hiring process, and not asking citizenship and anything beyond "Are you eligible to work in the US?" I forsee a bunch of these training classes in SpaceX's future.
- Ongoing disagreement between SpaceX and DOJ regarding applicable law?
- SpaceX HR misunderstanding, at the time, the applicable law? (I can see how this category of applicants might be rare enough that HR people fail to account for them.)
- SpaceX HR policy lining up with DOJ's view, but hiring managers choosing candidates with a suspicious statistical distribution?
It looks like SpaceX HR fucked up something that's should be pretty obvious to HR departments. They've already corrected it and will likely be fined for the mistake. Nothing nefarious here either way, not intentionally as far as I can tell.
The people the DOJ claims are discriminated against (asylees and refugees) can't vote. The issue is SpaceX claiming they can only hire citizens (who can vote) and permanent residents (who can't vote).
Biden (and Trump) has marked a shift towards industrial policy, I think the neoliberal cosmopolitan globalism era may be coming to a close - or at least become as hotly contested an issue among the Dems as pro-war neoconservatism has among the Republicans.
I mean "pro-union neoliberal globalists" is already a term with quite a lot of tension in it.
Yes, it's a fair point (and I hope you're right, as a mostly working-class person myself), but it's also not entirely incompatible.
It doesn't cost major companies very much to treat their workers just a LITTLE better. And who earns all the big bucks these days... mostly tech and finance, which are already globalized and tend to treat their workers better than, say, Starbucks. Maybe in a decade or two unionized global capital will be just as much an invisible norm as, say, weekends.
But hey, if that doesn't come to pass and both parties instead focus more domestically... great, I say! I'd love for us to clean up our house.
But the investors (and board, executives, etc) want to see a 21% profit, instead of the 18.5% that they would see if they gave their employees appropriate raises, benefits and appropriate safety protocols instead of pushing them harder.
Starbucks is already globalized, there is no Google in China but there is Starbucks. I don't think "global unions" are possible, but if they were the concessions would likely have to be more than "a little."
I don't think of neoliberal globalists as actually pro union other than lip service. Ironically, there are a lot of conservatives that are perfectly happy to see unionization efforts in the working class, and have never been in favor of the level of corporatism (nearly fascist at some levels) that we currently see in the US.
I'm not saying it's truly fascism, which I consider a twist of corporate based socialism... I'm saying, that in some circumstances with the level of corporate protectionism, it isn't far off of economic fascism in terms of say Defense/Weapons, Agriculture and Pharmaceutical industries; which aren't exactly free market capitalism.
I am expressly not AntiFa and not communist or in support of such regimes or the direction that they want to go in.
Even if they can't vote, some of their family members can, and their kids and their friends will be able to. There's a reason major cities are often blue (largely linked to their history of immigration), and across generations, these loyalties can build up. (Also, the Democrats largely gave up on the rural areas as a matter of political strategy, but that's a separate story).
Asylees and refugees on the other hand... I can entirely believe that, but I guess we won't see the bigger picture of that (vs large-scale immigration from Central/South America) for a while.
Immigrants go to cities because there are jobs, not because they are blue.
As an aside, when you think of selecting a vacation destination in a foreign country, do you prefer to go to rural areas where you risk negative attention based on where you were born?
Would you do the same when selecting somewhere to live?
I think that's reversing the cause and effect a bit? I'm not saying immigrants go to cities for Democratic policies, but that cities tend to lean Democrat partially because they are full of diverse immigrants from different places and backgrounds. The Republicans over the last few decades took a measured approach to both focus on rural voters and also project a USA-first image that can at times be seen as anti-immigration. The Democrats took advantage of that to solidify their grasp on urban areas.
Oh I see what you're saying now. Took advantage sounds a little strong to me but I mostly agree. I don't think either party had a choice and were just maintaining their constituencies as they have been for 70+ years. It's not like all the republicans recently moved to rural areas from non-rural ones and ONLY THEN the politicians started pandering to their respective demos.
I think the knowledge of this strategy's existence grew, but the strategy itself has been the same for a long time.
It goes back to early generation of European working-class industrial immigrants, then continued with techy Asians and Indians (who were often Democratic not for economics but because the Republicans got more and more nationalist). These days the Hispanic vote (which is a lot of the "immigrants" group) still leans blue, even though they don't necessarily swing culturally as left as the white young Democrats.
Reading some of these articles, here is what I disagree about your characterization:
For almost all of the east coast/midwest cities I have lived in, the Black "great northern migration" was a much larger factor in the Democratization of cities than foreign immigrant populations.
I agree that, especially in the northeast, where democrats started to take hold were communities that were distinct from the traditional anglo-protestant axis (particularly Irish catholics), but by the time this really accelerated and became an urban trend in the early to mid to even late 20th century (urban = democrat emerged most strongly in the 80s and 90s as your articles identify), most of these populations were already multi-generational American households, not new immigrants. Sure they had not been there since the Mayflower, but plenty had been there since the 19th century. What united these disparate groups was an attraction to industrial policy, less so some immigrant axis.
Your article #3 is not about the US but rather Europe, your articles #2 and #4 (especially #4) explicitly disagree with you about immigration being the driving factor, and your first article indicates that it has more to do with industrial policy than immigration.
Thanks for taking the time to thoroughly read these (and in more detail than I did! Lol, how embarrassing, especially #3! Good catch, and careless on my part. Sorry!)
Re #1 (the Atlantic), these passages capture most of my thoughts. And the other two articles touch on similar themes.
----------------------
> There is no obvious reason why a 19th-century movement led by Irish Catholic noneducated factory workers should become a 21st-century party for college grads, nonwhite voters, and software developers that defends gay rights, women’s rights, and legalized abortion. But it makes sense if you understand the Democratic Party through the lens of the modern city. Starting in the 1970s through today, Democrats and Republicans have been compelled to take sides on issues that hadn’t previously been politicized. And they have routinely sorted themselves along urban-rural lines, creating a pattern where there was once merely a tendency.
[...]
> As the writer and researcher Will Wilkinson argues, cities are magnets for individuals who score highly on “openness”—the Big Five personality trait that comprises curiosity, love of diversity, and open-mindedness.
[...]
> Urban residents trade cars for public transit, live in neighborhoods with local trash codes, and deal with planning commissions about shadows, ocean views, and parking rights. City residents are natural “externality pessimists,” to use Steve Randy Waldman’s clever phrase, who are exquisitely sensitive to the consequences of individual behavior in a dense place where one man’s action is another man’s nuisance. As a result, residents of dense cities tend to reject libertarianism as unacceptable chaos and instead agitate for wiser governance related to health care, housing policy, and climate change.
----------------------
I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense -- that (foreign) immigration was not the decisive factor of cities becoming more Democratic. I stand corrected. That's not just a technicality, it's a substantial correction. Thank you.
However, I do want to make the case that MIGRATION in general (of people, classes, workers, etc., both foreign but especially domestic, as you pointed out) shapes cultures in a way that ultimately helped further the urban-rural divide. Whether it's seeing other ethnicities, religions, cultures, education levels, or just economic classes and job types, the sheer density of city living forces people to learn to live together. Granted, it's not always easy easy, per the article's quote, "one man’s action is another man’s nuisance". But it happens.
And all these factored played together, weakly at first, and then more and more through the decades as party leadership polarized themselves to form stronger and stronger tribal identities... broadly, the Democrats taking the dense urbanites who favored openness (to cultures, religions, immigrants, etc.), protection through regulation, and education vs the Republicans who valued tradition, freedom (from other people and the central government, especially), and hard work that doesn't require higher education.
I don't think it has to have played out this way if not for the two-sided winner-take-all politics we have. But because we only had those two choices (for many decades), all those forces/themes from immigration to industrial policy virtuously/viciously reinforced each other. But I do stand corrected... foreign immigration was not the major input to those changes. Thank you for taking the time to really think through and discuss this!
Nothing in there I disagree with, my disagreement was mostly over the 'largely'/monocausal suggestion of your original comment - migration definitely is a big part of the story of the modern urban Democratic party.
What's interesting is that one of the articles linked indicates that this Democratic shift has been substantial even among people who have generationally been in the same city for a long time. I don't think this really undercuts migration as a massive effect, but indicates the impact of your neighbors as well as perhaps some realignment of the Democrats towards industrial policy that benefited people in the cities.
> Thanks for taking the time to thoroughly read these (and in more detail than I did!
Quickly skimming articles to see if they hold up is a skill learned from years of highschool debate, only a minute or two to prepare to respond to your opponents arguments
I've redacted my statement since it is no longer relevant, interesting data. I wonder how refugees would vote comparitively to immigrants, one would assume it would be close but I could be entirely wrong.
I think it's a fascinating question though (how asylees and refugees would vote if they could, vs immigrants and migrants), one which I don't even have a gut feeling for.
Most migrants from Central/South America will already be somewhat familiar with US culture due to geographic proximity, and often will have family and friends here who can help assimilate/absorb them into both local/municipal cultures and the broader US political landscape.
Refugees and asylees don't necessarily have that, especially if they are coming from a non-democratic and non-Western culture.
Well yes but more likely it's Democrats acting on behalf of other companies who want to hamstring SpaceX by burying them under frivolous and vague lawsuits.
And, pragmatically, this is how you want to do it. Get your favors in early enough in the election cycle that no one remembers when the actual election rolls around. Comply, but not enough to actually succeed.
Tin-foil hat time, but with the current Biden Administration, you also have to consider the possibility that it's a shot across the bow to ensure Twitter censors "misinformation" going into the US elections.
If this does not work, perhaps the IRS next up to bat?
This seems ripe for exploitation by foreign intelligence agencies:
"Moreover, asylees’ and refugees’ permission to live and work in the United States does not expire, and they stand on equal footing with U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents under export control laws. Under these laws, companies like SpaceX can hire asylees and refugees for the same positions they would hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. And once hired, asylees and refugees can access export-controlled information and materials without additional government approval, just like U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents."
So the idea is that the DOJ is deebly goncerned that one of their political enemies du jour is not hiring the "refugees" (in most cases economic migrants) they are illegally allowing to enter the country with approximately zero screening or even basic proof of identity, to work on highly sensitive dual use military technology.
Interesting. As a company angling or fulfilling large government contracts for sensitive projects I would have thought they had at least some requirements to avoid hiring non US-persons. Curious if they have a valid argument to have extended that practice to the whole company as this release seems to state.
Wow, there is a ton of confusion in these comments about U.S. export law, and what this suit is about.
U.S. export control law is intended to prevent technologies that have military significance from spreading beyond the U.S. There are two relevant regimes: Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by the Department of Commerce, and International Traffic in Arms regulation (ITAR), which is administered by the Department of State. ITAR regulates weapons and weapon-adjacent technologies, EAR regulates a much larger set of technologies with military significance.
The provision of these export control laws that's relevant here is that U.S. companies can only allow "U.S. Persons" to access export-controlled technology. A "U.S. Person" is a technical term that currently includes four categories: U.S. Citizens, U.S. permanent residents (green card holders), asylum seekers, and refugees. Anyone not in these categories can only access export-controlled technology with a waiver.
SpaceX, like many aerospace companies, deals with ITAR-regulated technology. (A rocket is the same thing as a missile, except for the bomb on the end). So, they hire only U.S. Persons. This is legal and quite common in the aerospace industry. It sucks for international engineers (there are so many amazing Iranian RF engineers ugh), but it's much easier to not need internal ITAR controls.
The DOJ is alleging that SpaceX hired only the first two types of U.S. persons, and excluded asylum seekers and refugees, even though they're treated identically by export control law. Which, honestly, is a really common misunderstanding in the industry (and in these comments too). People have a sense of "ITAR is strict" and think that only U.S. citizens are allowed, and they forget about the other three categories. SpaceX is definitely wrong - they unlawfully discriminated against candidates based on national origin and citizenship. The DOJ is definitely right, and I have to assume SpaceX will settle rather than contesting the suit.
It is possible that SpaceX deliberately discriminated against refugees and asylum seekers. But I suspect what happened is that they misunderstood export control law early on in the company's history, and their HR/Legal for whatever reason did not correct the wrong claims about export control law. (Though it is odd that the DOJ alleges discrimination in 2018-2020, SpaceX was a huge company at that point and should have clearly understood export control law).
Source: A lot of export control briefings during onboarding at companies, hiring engineers for EAR-controlled roles. I also made that mistake myself by writing a posting that specified only U.S. citizens or permanent residents, though in my case HR caught it and corrected it.
Thanks for the explainer. I’m on mobile so I’ll look up the exact language later. But since you seem knowledgeable about this, why are those granted asylum and refugee status included as “US persons” in the context of this employment classification? I can venture a guess, but my guess is really that it’s kind of a hanger-on from the Operation Paperclip and Cold War days, where we’d obviously want to bring in certain human capital from hostile regimes for our benefit. Basically I’m looking to understand more about the history of those regulations.
I have no sense of how common these sorts of investigations are so I have no idea if it is political, but fwiw I feel like I see US Citizen for ITAR requirements not infrequently. I am surprised this could not be settled with a small payment and a fix to their job listings.
> The United States seeks fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination.
Does anybody know how such penalties are calculated? In "role-based damages," penalties would be limited to the total wages for the hiring reqs in question. This corresponds to the counterfactual where each of the roles would have been gone to an asylee. But I could also see the DOJ arguing that every "deterred" asylee is owed foregone wages. This "applicant-based damages" doesn't correspond to any serious counterfactual, but it has the virtue of being a much bigger number.
Before posting any opinion on this, please go learn about ITAR.
Companies like SpaceX exist under this umbrella. I have worked under ITAR rules for many years. I've had to go fix ITAR violation disasters at some of these companies. If you have never sat in a conference room with a bunch of lawyers to discuss degrees of exposure and how to repair the damage done by unqualified employees, you likely don't have enough context to voice a valid opinion about any of this.
My take: This is a stunt to squeeze Musk where it hurts. Politics at its worst.
I too have read the relevant ITAR policies and no where in them does it say you cannot hire non-citizens if your company is engaged in ITAR compliance. As said somewhere else in the comments, if your organization does not have robust systems to segregate employee access based on ITAR status, clearance level, project membership, or any other need-to-know reason, then not hiring US citizens is the least of your concerns.
Like I said: "If you have never sat in a conference room with a bunch of lawyers"...
Typical internet. HN isn't immune. Some of us actually live the reality of what is being discussed, others think that a google search makes them experts. It's like people making categorical statements about business when they never ran anything even close to a non-trivial business.
I say this not because I'm an Elon Fan, but as someone who's forced to fund the Federal Governemnt: This is thoroughly a dumb lawsuit and a waste of Taxpayer money.
I think it's completely fine for a company that regularly deals with classified or ITAR material to require _all_ employees of an organization meet that requirement.
The government is like "Don't leak our / ITAR secrets, but we're forcing you to hire people that could potentially do so".
What a waste of time. There are bigger fish to fry.
The takeaway here is that SpaceX HR didn't do their job when it comes to hiring.Question that is unanswered is in what other ways is SpaceX HR not doing their job.
Of course you understand I mean in the country with a space program benefitting from that work. In which case, it's at least true in North America, UK, EU, India, Russia, Japan, China, Australia. Not sure if any others have a space program.
Coincidentally, these countries also have restrictions on foreign nationals and entities contributing to the program.
Can you think of a nation that has a space program where it is not?
A significant amount of work on non-government space program doesn't require clearance.[0] But even NASA has non-cleared jobs.
It does require compliance with ITAR (the topic of this suit), but ITAR explicitly considers asylees and refugees to be US persons.
In other words, for non-cleared work (which is to say: most of SpaceX's work, their roles don't usually require clearance) asylees and refugees are just as capable as citizens or permanent residents.
[0]: Specifically, looking at SpaceX's own job postings, their work on Starshield and other military contracts, as well as on-site work on air force bases requires clearance, but other roles don't generally.
You are using the word compliance while ignoring the other side of the equation, namely clearance of the individual. For an organization to be ITAR compliant, it has to ensure that access to materials that are on the USML list are only available to those eligible. Those eligible are verified through a clearance process that confirms their legal status in the US and collects sufficient evidence to demonstrate their allegiance to the US.
Ergo, legal status (ex. citizenship) is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to gain access to ITAR materials i.e. by virtue of being a US citizen, one is not automatically entitled to access, transport or store ITAR materials.
> For an organization to be ITAR compliant, it has to ensure that access to materials that are on the USML list are only available to those eligible. Those eligible are verified through a clearance process that confirms their legal status in the US and collects sufficient evidence to demonstrate their allegiance to the US.
Can you cite this requirement? I've never heard of it and cannot find statutory support for it anywhere. The ITAR requirements seem to just differentiate between US persons and foreign persons, and require preclearance (by the DOD) if you want to provide munitions information to foreign persons. They provide no restriction on transfer to US persons.
In other words, under the law US-personhood is sufficient condition to gain access to ITAR materials. Businesses may require additional justifications (e.g. the janitor doesn't have a reason to access ITAR data), but that's beyond the legal requirements, and those cannot trump equal protection issues.
I have CGP/ITAR clearance, I can confirm this. Each individual needs to go through clearance process, and fines for transfer of ITAR material to people that don't have ITAR clearance are significant, like a milion dollars, and a year in prison PER A DOCUMENT. For a company is much more, of course.
For ITAR assessment, they are going through your employment, and financial history, criminal check in any country in which you lived in the last three years, bank accounts, and this assessment is repeated every three or four years.
For a job interview, as I didn't have clearance, I had to be escorted, and my phone's camera was covered with tape. And all this in a company that is building landing gears for mostly commercial aircaft, with a few military programs. So, nothing top secret, or high tech to be honest.
So, the idea that an asylant or refugee can work in SpaceX, with often unverifiable criminal history is insane.
Janitors in particular -- because they're responsible for handling waste disposal. Including paper waste. Paper that frequently has sensitive information on it.
US Government: You have to careful about potentially leaking export controlled material, or your employees will be held personally responsible and go to jail.
US Government: You have to careful about potentially leaking export controlled material, or your employees will be held personally responsible and go to jail. Also, you have to comply with non-discrimination law while doing that.
SpaceX: Okay, so we’ll ignore non-discrimination law and excuse it as “being careful about potentially leaking export controlled material”.
It's almost like the US government is trying to ensure DoD dollars don't go very far.
More importantly, from a national security perspective, it doesn't make sense to exempt every refugee and asylee from ITAR restrictions. The benefit is negligible to the typical refugee and the risk is immense.
> More importantly, from a national security perspective, it doesn’t make sense to exempt every refugee and asylee from ITAR restrictions.
Justifying workplace discrimination on a generally prohibited bases on the basis of “well, if the government regulations that we are relying on to justify our discrimination were revised in a way that we feel makes better policy sense, they would require the discrimination we are doing, even though they explicitly do not as currently written” is…probably not an argument that will succeed in any US court.
Your comment is completely tangential to the point I was making.
My primary concern isn't "succeeding in any US court". I'm not involved with SpaceX or the job applicants who were passed over. My concern is much more around the use of tax revenues, the overall security of the country and the stability of the world order. There are a multitude of cases the DOJ could be taking on right now. That this is what they choose to litigate is a clear warning sign.
This is a really dishonest interpretation of events. US law states that asylees have been vetted thoroughly and can take these positions the same as any US citizen or green card holder (if you had read the article).
You can't vet anyone thoroughly though! You can reply yes I love the united states a million times, read the constitution a million times and still be part of some sect.
He’s kind of a weirdo and definitely makes some spectacularly bad decisions, but a an industrialist it’s hard to argue that anyone is even playing in the same ballpark.
Exactly. He's mercurial, he doesn't think things through properly but how many founders have created a $1 trillion company? Let alone SpaceX, Boring Co, Neuralink, and X.ai
Seems more like a contract negotiation and or political. DOJ is clearly against Elon Musk and is punishing him. That and/or specifically people that do not like Elon Must and is directing the DOJ to find things to do against him.
Show me the same data on hiring asylees at Google side by side and I'll believe them.
The focus specifically on refugees/asylees makes it look political, when they're a very small proportion of people excluded due to their approach to ITAR.
I'm sure large numbers of engineers from all over the world have browsed their job listings in the past to see that they're automatically excluded because they're not US citizens, and that's not led to any trouble, or at least no newsworthy trouble.
This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. ITAR restrictions, for example, prohibit foreigners from using or testing night vision equipment (even on US soil). If a team is hiring a rocket engineer, and it's a violation of ITAR for them to see technical data on SpaceX's rocket program then it's effectively impossible for a non-US person to perform in this role. Perhaps SpaceX could have phrased things differently, like "this job requires access to ITAR-controlled technical material..."
Now, as to whether or not asylees are able to access ITAR restricted material seems a bit more complicated. Searching around the internet it seems that only some asylees are able to access ITAR material: https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-pe...