Of Course They Did

The Department of Justice has secured an agreement from Apple for fines resulting from their abuse of the foreign employee visa process.

Basically, they actively discouraged American workers for positions that they wanted to fill with cheaper foreign workers.

Any realistic assessment of the associated programs, H1B and L1A, is that driving wages down is the real purpose of this:

Apple illegally discriminated against US citizens and other US residents in its hiring and recruitment practices for certain types of positions that went to foreign workers, the US Department of Justice said yesterday. Apple agreed to pay up to $25 million in back pay and civil penalties to settle the DOJ allegations.

Apple discriminated "against US citizens and certain non-US citizens whose permission to live in and work in the United States does not expire," the agency said. The $25 million payment was called the largest ever collected by the Justice Department under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Apple is required to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and create an $18.25 million fund to provide back pay to those harmed by its hiring practices. Apple did not admit guilt in the settlement. But the company acknowledged in a statement that it had "unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard," according to Reuters.

………

As Reuters noted, "Foreign labor can often be cheaper than hiring US workers, and immigrants who rely on their employers for green card sponsorship are seen as less likely to leave for a different job."

Any unbiased analysis of the foreign worker programs is that wage suppression is a feature, not a bug.

Companies getting caught abusing this is the exception, not the rule.