It's very important to notice that one of the chief arguments used for the Navajo nation is that hiring foreigners (anybody who lives outside of the reservation) could degrade the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation.

Sovereignty arguments have been used by many Indian tribes to defeat challenges to preference hiring.

It seems to reason that if non-tribal workers from outside of the reservation could degrade the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation the same should be true when foreign workers are allowed into the U.S. Preserving sovereignty is a compelling argument but it lands on deaf ears whenever activists have tried the same argument against allowing guest workers like H-1B/H-2B/L-1 into the U.S.

So far the Navajos are winning these types of lawsuits. The EEOC and many other employers have tried to force the Navajo nation to hire non-Navajos but it's a losing battle because, as New Mexico attorney general Patricia Madrid wrote: Congress "expressly disallows the EEOC from suing a government, such as the Navajo Nation or the State of New Mexico or any of the individual States of the Union."

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Before we shed crocodile tears for SRP or Peabody, or even the Basha's supermarket chain, let's keep in mind that Basha's has a bad reputation for union busting and the hiring of illegal aliens. SRP hires large numbers of H-1Bs and in 2004 the utility actively lobbied with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce to expand the H-1B program. Discrimination in the hiring of engineers at SRP's Navajo Station happens because Navajo Indians don't want non-Navajos taking jobs away from their own people. Off the reservation SRP has shown they are willing to discriminate against American citizens by hiring H-1Bs from places like India. Perhaps we could learn something from the Navajos about doing what's best for their own people.