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DOJ says it will ensure ‘college students are treated fairly and have an equal opportunity to compete for internships and jobs’

Georgia Institute of Technology must pay half a million dollars in civil penalties for running a job recruitment platform that included postings that excluded non-citizens.

The settlement came after a “lawful permanent resident” student filed a complaint with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

“The student alleged that a bank advertised a U.S. citizen-only internship on Georgia Tech’s career services website,” the department stated in its news release.

“Upon investigating the student’s complaint, the department uncovered additional unlawful discriminatory advertisements on Georgia Tech’s job recruiting platform that discouraged or restricted certain non-U.S. citizen students from applying,” the Justice Department stated.

The College Fix reached out to the Justice Department’s media team for further comment, but it has not responded in the past week. Georgia Tech has also not responded to a request for comment in the past week.

The DOJ investigation determined the public university violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. A total of $1.6 million fines were levied against 30 employers who advertised citizens-only jobs on the platform.

The university must “ensure that certain career services personnel in its undergraduate and graduate programs are trained on the INA’s anti-discrimination provision,” for the next three years and revise its policies to align with the law.

“The Justice Department will vigorously enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act’s nondiscrimination mandate to ensure that college students are treated fairly and have an equal opportunity to compete for internships and jobs,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke stated in the news release.

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A representative from the campus Turning Point USA group called Georgia Tech’s actions “hypocritical.”

“Other schools have advocated black only spaces, dorms, and graduations but claim this kind of segregation is a good thing because it somehow protects black students,” the group representative said in a message.

But now the university “whose upper-level officials undoubtedly support the loose immigration policies of the left, are treating legal foreign students, who just want a better education and a shot at a better life, like second class citizens,” the representative said.

“A revival of American values in our institutes of higher education will not only benefit these non-US citizen students, but America as a whole,” he said.

While Georgia Tech will have to pay out for discriminating against non-citizens, other universities are facing accusations they helped favor foreigners for job recruitment.

The University of Chicago, the Discovery Partners Institute at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Institute of Technology, along with other companies, are accused of promoting tech jobs to foreign workers to the detriment of Americans, as previously reported by The Fix.

The agencies “offer coaching on how to obtain an H-1B visa and how to transition smoothly between jobs,” which make it “even easier for their client companies to discriminate against American workers and prioritize foreigners,” advocates for U.S. tech workers alleged.

MORE: Group that killed affirmative action sues West Point

IMAGE: Career.GaTech.edu

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