Ria, I'm afraid I'm going to have to side with Mr. Minster on this one. Before I retired I used to work for a telecom company that did a lot of business with Federal government agencies, and we often had to physically visit our customers in Federal facilities, such as the FBI building in Washington, DC, the FAA headquarters in Oklahoma, a few US military bases, and federally owned centers, such as the Bonneville Power Administration. My boss at the time was from France, and was a French citizen. He was not allowed to accompany us into ANY of these facilities without extensive credentialing many months in advance of the planned visit, if at all. All we US citizens needed was a week or so for a rudimentary background check, at the most. This is not an engineering type position sitting in an office where it won't really matter if they are a US citizen or not, this person could be and will be dealing with people at a high level in government, and has to have access to government facilities where they work. Maybe things have changed under the current Biden administration, but I do not believe the US citizen requirement is unreasonable in this case. It will give them MUCH easier access to our strategic partners in US government facilities. 73; Mike W7VO On 08/11/2021 4:00 PM rjairam@gmail.com <rjairam@gmail.com> wrote:
I am a member of said committee and I oppose even this language.
I would encourage all of my fellow directors who do not approve to voice their dissent as well.
I do not agree with counsel’s assessment and in our previous communications you have indicated that counsel was “wishy washy” and you didn’t trust what they said. I was not aware that they have firmly come out in favor of this requirement. This is certainly news to me.
A well known defense contractor is facing this very issue - Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is facing a federal investigation by the DOJ over alleged discriminatory practices after a candidate who is a permanent resident complained to the EEOC about discrimination based on national origin.
ARRL does not deal with national secrets. None of what we do requires any sort of security clearance.
As much as ham radio operators would like to pretend that we do, we don’t.
If a defense contractor who deals with intelligence gathering and ICBMs can’t impose this requirement, who are we?
At the very least we should remove anything that would allow anyone to complain about national origin discrimination.
If I were an outsider applying for the job, I would decline to disclose my citizenship status until an offer was made. And I would be well within my rights to do so.
Ria N2RJ
On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 5:45 PM Minster, David NA2AA (CEO) < dminster@arrl.org mailto:dminster@arrl.org > wrote:
> >
This is a follow-up to the posting about the search we are doing for the Director, Emergency Management.
In the posting, a requirement listed was for US Citizenship. I received emails within minutes from 2 Directors concerned about this requirement.
I will be rewording the requirement, but I have worked with CT counsel and here’s the short of it:
* It is not illegal to require US Citizenship for a position * The requirement must be tied to a legitimate reason or cause * The reason or cause must be documentable and defendable
My assessment was confirmed by counsel. The reasoning is this:
* The first two served agencies examined (FEMA, DHS) -REQUIRE- US Citizenship for employment. Although there are “rare exceptions”, they require citizenship. * These requirements are public and well documented. * It is not unreasonable to expect that our EmComm Director, in order to attend meetings of a sensitive nature or clearance, would be held to the same standards. * It is not unreasonable to expect that if our EmComm Director did not meet these standards, these agencies could quietly or overtly exclude ARRL from those meetings.
It is my intention to add the following language to the job description after having passed it through counsel:
“Must be able to be credentialed by our served agencies, who may require US Citizenship and an FBI background check.”
If you have an issue with this, please contact me directly, ASAP.
Thanks.
David
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