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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing a recruiting agency for not referring an American applicant to a position at a Mountain View company and suggesting that only non-Americans need apply.
The defendant in the case is Sibitalent Corps., a Texas-based employment agency that specializes in recruiting information technology staff. According to the EEOC, a Sibitalent recruiter contacted an American applicant by e-mail for a business data analyst position in Mountain View and included a notification that said “ONLY H-1B” in large text. H-1B visas are employer-sponsored, non-immigrant temporary visas that allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs, allowing highly-skilled immigrants to work in the U.S. The name of the Mountain View company was not specified and was not accused of wrongdoing by the EEOC.
The American applicant contested the legality of the visa requirement for the position, and the Sibitalent recruiter stopped communicating and refused to refer him for the job, according to the EEOC. Sibitalent then allegedly referred two foreign candidates for the same role. They were of Indian and Nepali origin, the EEOC states.
“Employers and employment agencies cannot shut qualified Americans out of job opportunities by using unjustified visa requirements as a proxy for national origin discrimination,” the EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said in the press release. Lucas, who was appointed to the position by President Donald Trump, added, “We will vigorously enforce federal law to protect American workers from unlawful discrimination.”
Some economic research suggests that workers with H-1B visas earn less than comparable domestic workers, suggesting that companies could save money in the long run by paying foreign workers less, while proponents say that H-1B visa-holders are essential sources of talent.
“Supporters see the (H-1B) program as a cornerstone of U.S. innovation and productivity, particularly in technology,” according to a brief from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. “Critics counter that many H-1B holders perform relatively routine jobs that domestic workers could also fill.”
It’s not clear why Sibitalent included the alleged “H-1B ONLY” notification for the job. A Sibitalent employee reached by phone declined to comment, and email requests for comment were unanswered as of press time. An EEOC spokesperson declined to provide comment due to the ongoing status of the case.
The EEOC is a federal agency that enforces laws against job discrimination and harassment. It was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion and national origin. The law’s national-origin protections apply to immigrants and American workers alike.
In 2025, the EEOC under Lucas made enforcement against national-origin discrimination targeting American workers a specific priority, including cases in which employers allegedly favored foreign workers or workers with particular visa statuses.
The lawsuit is a part of the Trump administration’s effort to clamp down on alleged discrimination of American workers at domestic companies. In August, for example, the Department of Justice reached a $3.2 million settlement with OpenAI for allegedly preferring workers with temporary employment visas over American workers.
The Trump administration has also imposed various restrictions on the H-1B program in recent years, arguing that the program puts downward pressure on wages and displaces American workers. Last September, Trump restricted entry for some new H-1B visa holders unless their employees paid a $100,000 fee, a move that was renewed this year. President Trump also signed an executive order on Sept. 18 requiring visa-granting agencies to consider whether the employer seeking the visa has recently laid off workers.
The U.S. has capped the number of H-1B visas holders to 85,000 new visas per year for decades. However, the total number of H-1B visas issued per year routinely surpasses the cap due to renewals and extensions of existing H1B visas. In fiscal year 2025, over 328,000 H-1B visas were issued nationwide, a number that has dropped markedly from 442,000 three years earlier.
In California, Apple, Google and Meta are the employers with the most number of H-1B beneficiaries in fiscal year 2026, with data included from Oct. 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
So a thousand companies in Silicon Valley all want to hire H1B employees, because they are cheaper … but one recruiter made a mistake and sent an email betraying the truth.
Now, that recruiter (probably not even the company that hired them and asked for H1Bs) will be made an example of … while the rest of Silicon Valley continues to do whatever they can to save money by not employing Americans … it’s just that they just won’t be stupid enough to put it in an email and send it to an applicant.