Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

§ 120.62 U.S. person.

U.S. person means a person 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).

And this seems to be interpreted by people[1] that employing lawful permanent residents does not need export authorisation.

1: https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-pe...

Is it really? Are there any examples we can point to?

Refugees are often dispossessed and struggling to build a new life. I guess if you want your spies to gather intelligence on what it's like to drive a cab or bus tables in your geopolitical adversaries, then it might be a great cover identity.

What do you mean by that? How would that be even possible with ITAR?

> It's completely reasonable to believe this is purely a consequence of meritocracy and not even a conscious choice.

How can it be “not even a conscious choice”? This is a large company. They train their HR people who they can or cannot hire. How can that training be “not even a conscious choice”?

This makes non-ITAR compliant janitors a harder bargain to hire. Same for the cafeteria workers the DOJ mentions, they may overhear discussion of ITAR work in the cafeteria and that's a problem.

For companies that mostly do ITAR work, it's a no brainer to stick to hiring just ITAR compliant individuals. Companies would fall over themselves to hire cheap labor otherwise LOL.

My above post is not commenting on the validity of the regulations surrounding ITAR, SpaceX, etc, it was responding to the implication that this effort was politically motivated when it clearly was not.

I don't know how many other companies the governmental department was checking, and it's not really relevant, just like the naughty things other kids may or may not have done when you're explaining why it's not correct to punch another kid just because they didn't share their toys.

"It's hard" isn't really an excuse; other industries are held to pretty strict regulatory standards (the entire medical industry for example) and while there are violations and it's a lot of work to validate that a hospital and the doctors and nurses are meeting these requirements, they do it. There are times hospitals need to be corrected, but they still do it. Same with the legal field, same with engineering fields, etc.

So I'm not sure what exactly is meaning to be communicated here; especially with a company like SpaceX, I expect they should be able to follow the regulations and check their applicants appropriately, not just decide "it's too much work" and deny legitimate and legal candidates a chance for employment.

I've worked for several DoD contractors. The question on the job application is "is there anything that would prevent you from obtaining a clearance?" It's not "are you a citizen or green card holder?"

And all that doesn't even really matter. Export controlled information is Controlled, Unclassified Information (CUI). It's one of the lowest grades of information we handle. It's in the name, you don't need a clearance to have access to it. Thus you don't need an investigation. The most you need is a background check, which most companies do for everyone, anyway.

I think it is right and proper that low-income victims of labor law crimes don't need to be able to afford attorneys to resolve grievances, and that there exist public institutions that litigate on their behalf, for free.

Also, Australia hosts a very important part of the NASA Deep Space Network in Canberra. I would assume there are lots of NASA and CSIRO employees there, and cooperation (trust) must be exceptionally high.

Also Soviets got lot's of technologies from communist sympathizers in US, but in the end that did not help them much.

So letting SpaceX to handle its trade secrets the way it wants, and hire whomever it wants, is the best way to go.