Cloudera Barred From Green Card Sponsorship Program for Two Years in $2 Million DOJ and Labor Department Settlement
Santa Clara, California-based data company Cloudera Inc. will be barred from sponsoring workers for green cards through the federal PERM program for two years under a settlement with the Justice Department and the Labor Department, the agencies announced Oct. 16.
Under the deal, Cloudera will set up a $1.4 million back-pay fund for qualified U.S. workers who the government says were not given fair consideration for jobs, and will pay $600,000 in civil penalties, according to the Justice Department.
“There are no exceptions: the Justice Department will hold accountable employers who discriminate against U.S. workers,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who heads the department’s Civil Rights Division. “This substantial settlement, in partnership with DOL, sends a strong signal to employers that the federal government will work together to ensure employers treat U.S. workers fairly.”
WHAT THE CLOUDERA PERM SETTLEMENT REQUIRES
PERM, or permanent labor certification, lets an employer sponsor a foreign worker for permanent residence only after showing that no qualified, willing and available U.S. worker could be found for the job.
According to the signed settlement agreement, Cloudera must withdraw any pending PERM applications whose recruitment used the company’s non-working email address, and must stay out of PERM for 24 months, filing no applications and posting no PERM job ads during that time. The agreement runs for three years.
The $1.4 million fund will pay the worker who filed the original discrimination charge and other eligible U.S. workers who contact the Justice Department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section within 180 days, the agreement says. The company also faces monitoring, revised PERM procedures and reporting requirements, according to the Justice Department, which called the two-year ban “one of the most significant sanctions available” to the Labor Department.
THE ALLEGATIONS
The settlement resolves a lawsuit the Justice Department filed in April. The department alleged then that Cloudera told applicants for PERM-related jobs to send résumés to an email account that did not accept outside email, and that a U.S. worker who tried to apply got a bounce-back message. The department said the case involved seven positions.
In the agreement, the government says its investigation found reasonable cause to believe that from no later than March 31, 2024, until at least Jan. 28, 2025, Cloudera engaged in a pattern or practice of citizenship status discrimination by failing to consider U.S. workers. The Labor Department had earlier suspended processing of Cloudera’s PERM applications for 180 days, starting in May, the agreement says.
The Justice Department said this is the 14th settlement under its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which it relaunched in 2025.
CLOUDERA’S RESPONSE
Cloudera does not admit wrongdoing in the agreement. The document says the company “maintains it complied with the Act, denies IER’s allegations, and asserts that it acted without any discriminatory intent.” It also says Cloudera voluntarily withdrew and halted its PERM applications and took corrective action as soon as it learned of a possible problem with the email address.
A Cloudera spokesperson told Bloomberg Law the address had been inadvertently restricted to internal employees, Newsweek reported. “Cloudera does not discriminate against anyone in making hiring decisions, and we remain firmly committed to fair, lawful, and open recruitment practices,” the spokesperson said, according to Newsweek.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice press release (Oct. 16, 2026) and the Cloudera settlement agreement; U.S. Department of Justice press release on the lawsuit (April 2026); Newsweek, citing Bloomberg Law (Oct. 17, 2026). https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-departments-justice-and-labor-secure-settlement-cloudera-enforce-two-year-perm-debarment ; https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1465571/dl ; https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/civil-rights-division-sues-cloudera-excluding-us-workers-applying-high-paying-technology ; https://www.newsweek.com/tech-company-barred-from-green-card-filings-amid-h-1b-visa-crackdown-12583659
Comments