On November 19, 2025, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the release of new and updated educational training materials to promote awareness and enforcement “around national origin discrimination and Anti-American bias,” which were released as part of the EEOC’s participation in Project Firewall, a U.S. Department of Labor-led initiative to enforce H-1B laws and prevent discrimination against American workers.  

The EEOC’s mandate includes enforcing civil rights protections so that workers are not discriminated against or otherwise treated unfairly based on certain identities, referred to as a “protected class.” These protected classes include race, gender, religion, age (for workers over 40), disability, and national origin. According to the EEOC’s description, national origin discrimination involves treating workers unfairly (the treatment can include either harmful or preferential treatment) because they are “from a particular country or part of the world, because of their ethnicity or accent, or because they appear to be of a certain ethnic background (even if they are not).” 

The new and updated materials from EEOC include a new one-page technical assistance document, “Discrimination Against American Workers Is Against The Law” and an update to EEOC’s national origin discrimination landing page, which gathers information and resources regarding national origin discrimination, including examples of what unlawful national origin discrimination can look like in the workplace and options for individuals who believe their rights have been violated. The new materials and announcement show that EEOC now has a heavy focus on discrimination against American citizens, based on employer preference for foreign-born employees, stating that “National origin discrimination can include preferring foreign workers, including workers with a particular visa status, over American workers.” EEOC’s press release notes that the new materials are evidence of EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas’s “priority to confront unlawful anti-American national origin bias, an area she has identified as a significant and ongoing focus for the agency’s compliance efforts, enforcement work, and litigation.” 

EEOC’s national origin discrimination page includes a list of examples of employer misconduct that can be reported and the appropriate agencies with jurisdiction, including: underpaying migrant workers on temporary visas, which can be reported to the EEOC, the Wage and Hour Division at the Labor Department, or the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, and employing people without work authorization, which EEOC recommends be reported to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, the page shares no resources or recommendations listed for foreign-born workers who may need to seek help after having their rights violated by employers.