Posted on 10/21/2015 8:02:25 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
One of the tech workers Disney laid off in January is meeting with Senate staffers Monday to describe his experience at Disney and dispel common misconceptions about the H-1B visa program.
The ex-Disney worker is meeting behind closed doors with Senate staffers from several offices, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation. These include Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions and Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
His goal is to personally “explain the Disney situation” and try to dispel four myths he says politicans are being “fed from the tech giants.” (RELATED: Qualcomm Lays Off 4,500 Workers While Demanding More H-1bs)
Nelson asked the Department of Labor to investigate the Disney layoffs, Sessions is a leading advocate for immigration policy that puts American workers first, and Cruz is an H-1B proponent who has worked to dramatically expand the program in the past.
The ex-Disney worker may also meet with staffers from the office of senior Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley , another leading critic of the visa program who has led legislative efforts to fix the alleged abuses. (RELATED: Rubio Breaks Silence On Reports Of H-1B Abuses)
Here are the four myths tech giants and their lobbyists are using to defend the program from critics, according to the former Disney worker:
Myth: Disney is an anomaly. “This exact same situation is happening all over our state and country with most of the large Fortune 500 companies,” the laid-off worker said in an email to TheDCNF.
Myth: The laid-off workers aren’t as qualified for the job. “I hold numerous technical certifications and received the highest possible job performance rating while with Disney,” he added.
Myth: Disney creates other jobs the laid-off workers can apply for. “Disney job postings did not really exist,” he added. “Out of the several hundred IT workers displaced, only three received a new IT job.”
Myth: There is a dire shortage of skilled American tech workers. “IT salaries have steadily decreased due to a low demand of U.S. IT workers,” he said. “And many IT jobs that do still exist in this country require that U.S. IT workers have the ability to work well with foreign offshore and onshore groups.”
He and hundreds of his fellow “Cast Members” were laid off in January and allegedly blacklisted from employment at other Disney-solicited contractors, after Disney forced them to train their foreign replacements. Several of the workers filed official complaints with the Department of Labor, spurring an ongoing investigation into Disney and other companies’ alleged abuse of the H-1B visa program.
The stated intent of the visa program is to help companies bring in high-skilled foreign workers for jobs Americans can’t fill. But some companies including Disney, Southern California Edison, Fossil Group and Catalina Marketing, are allegedly using it to cut labor costs.
Employers like cheap labor, no surprise there.
Hopefully this will propel Cruz to change his position on increasing H-1B visas. There are already laws in place to prevent the abuses we see today and those laws are ignored and not enforced.
I’m willing to bet that there aren’t a half dozen positions in the whole country that can’t be filled by Americans.
However, if you make welfare sufficiently lucrative, they might just go on welfare and get their cash from the off-books economy.
H-1B should exist....but I think it has to be attached to a salary offered...say $75,000 minimum and a two-year maximum usage for the company.
“Nelson asked the Department of Labor to investigate the Disney layoffs, Sessions is a leading advocate for immigration policy that puts American workers first, and Cruz is an H-1B proponent who has worked to dramatically expand the program in the past.”
what is Bill Nelson’s stance on illegal immigration?
4-H1b0? Are we importing young foreign aspiring farmers now?
Double or triple that minimum and we're talking; if H-1B is really about 'top talent' that's still a bargain.
H1B bump for later...
“Sessions is a leading advocate for immigration policy that puts American workers first, and Cruz is an H-1B proponent who has worked to dramatically expand the program in the past.”
This issue alone makes Cruz unelectable in my view! Cruz evidently is the “organ grinder’s monkey” for Disney!
How did work that was previously being done by permanent career employees suddenly become temporary work? How long is "temporary?" Will these H-1B temporary visa holders still be doing this work in one year, two years, five years from now?
-PJ
Bill follows the Democrat party line on everything!
He’s from my area...25plus years ago convinced us he was a Christian....
...his children were in Young Life like mine....
Oh he pulled a lying number on us
.....He votes liberal to the core.... Planned Parenthood too, of course
He doesn’t give a flying fig what his constituents think.....if they have an R on their voting record
I would like to know what sort of severance these workers get.
If this happened to me, I can imagine that I would be out of there, and not stick around to train my foreign replacement.
But, if the severance were good enough, then I would have incentive to stay.
Just wondering how it all works. Would you really stay for a period of 3 months, or six months, to train your replacement, when you need to be out there looking for a new job???
Bill Nelson is probably producing theater while being bought and paid for by Disney. The laid off worker shouldn’t talk to him. Most likely Nelson is doing some spy work for the bad guys.
This is a golden opportunity for him to gracefully abandon his wrongheaded support for H-1B. No Republican who doesn't take a strong "America for Americans" stand can win the White House in 2016.
There are already laws in place to prevent the abuses we see today
The problem with H-1B is not that it's being "abused" but that it's working exactly as designed:
H-1B Is Designed to Allow Employers to Replace Americans with Cheap Foreign Workers
H-1B Is Designed to Allow Employers to Pay Foreign Workers Extremely Low Wages
It’s a firm of wealth and knowledge redustribution. Both of which Nelson supports.
bttt
This will last at Disney until things start to collapse. The Asians can punch a lot of code but their code is never wrong in their eyes so it never needs to be fixed. If something stops working, it is not their code that did it. You have to bring in someone to fix without their knowledge.
There is such a thing as an “LCA”....a minimum salary that the employer must offer in order to justify the H1B. It varies by region but I think it is only around $50K right now.
Ten years ago a lot of these people were actually well-qualified. Today there is an avalanche of fake resumes out there. If you audited the resumes vs. actual experience you could probably revoke 80% of the visas for fraud.
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