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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.


Huh, that's a good nit! And that makes perfect sense as a policy. Shows that my knowledge of the export control law also isn't perfect either.


> 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.




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