Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for information regarding its lawsuit against SpaceX — which claims Elon Musk’s rocket company “failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees” — probing Attorney General Merrick Garland on whether the action is politically motivated.
“I was surprised to learn that the United States Department of Justice is suing SpaceX for favoring American citizens in hiring,” Vance says in a letter to Garland, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. “It is difficult to separate this new DOJ investigation of SpaceX from the Biden administration’s other interactions with Mr. Musk,” he continues, providing a litany of instances where Biden has publicly bashed Musk.
The Ohio Senator points out that SpaceX is following protocol of hiring U.S. citizens observed by other federal government agencies and contractors, which protects intellectual property from theft by foreign nationals on behalf of other countries.
“A simple internet search reveals a host of other federal government and contractor jobs that require applicants to prove American citizenship, as they should. It makes sense that the men and women tasked with maintaining federal databases or managing our satellites should be citizens or permanent residents with some stake in the future of our nation,” Vance continues.
Read the full letter here:
J.D. Vance Letter to Garland by John Binder
Vance goes on to question whether Justice’s lawsuit has to do with Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter, stating there are “many intermediate steps that DOJ could have taken to inform SpaceX about current federal hiring rules and answer Mr. Musk’s [International Traffic in Arms Regulations] (ITAR) concerns before initiating a lawsuit,” adding that other aerospace jobs require employees to be citizens.
“Justice must be dispensed in an impartial manner, without political animus, if Americans are to have faith in our system. Unfortunately, the timing of DOJ’s investigation into SpaceX could be interpreted as being connected to the Twitter acquisition,” Vance writes. “There were many intermediate steps that DOJ could have taken to inform SpaceX about current federal hiring rules and answer Mr. Musk’s ITAR concerns before initiating a lawsuit. This, coupled with the fact that many federal aerospace jobs include explicit citizenship requirements, suggests that SpaceX could have been investigated by DOJ because of Mr. Musk’s management of Twitter, not because SpaceX’s hiring practices are uniquely odious.”
Vance closes the letter with four questions he asks the DOJ to answer by September 29:
- Has the DOJ investigated other private aerospace companies or government contractors for hiring practices similar to those of SpaceX?
- Does the DOJ believe that favoring American citizens for jobs constitutes discrimination against noncitizens?
- Did the DOJ ever have a meeting with SpaceX to inform the company that it may be out of compliance with federal hiring laws and to encourage SpaceX to change its practices?
- Was the DOJ investigation that precipitated this new discrimination lawsuit initiated in response to Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter?
The letter comes after President Biden has on multiple occasions singled out Musk following his purchase of Twitter — in one instance, ironically, claiming his “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.”
The ITAR, which partially governs companies like SpaceX because of its lucrative government contracts and dealings in national security, makes clear that companies may need to obtain authorization to allow foreign hires to handle technology that is covered under the law.
While the DOJ sues SpaceX for seemingly favoring American citizens, the agency has a history of hardly ever prosecuting employers for hiring illegal aliens over Americans and legal immigrants.
The latest data available, encompassing April 2018 to March 2019, shows that just 11 executives and no companies were prosecuted in only seven cases where illegal aliens were found to have been hired for U.S. jobs that would have otherwise gone to Americans.
“Indeed, since criminal penalties for employers were first enacted by Congress in 1986, few employers have ever been prosecuted under these provisions,” researchers at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University noted in their report.
The DOJ is less than forthcoming with this sort of information exposing such few prosecutions. To obtain the data, now years old, researchers at TRAC had to sue the agency for what they said were violations of the Freedom of Information Act.
