Attorney says Disney displaced US employees with foreign guest workers

By Rob Lorei

The presidential race so far has brought a lot of attention to illegal immigration and its affect on low wage jobs, but there is growing attention on the practice of major companies using the H1B work visa to replace US workers with imported, cheaper foreign workers. The H1B visa was originally intended to fill highly specialized job positions when companies could not find domestic workers who could do them. But as the New York Times reported over the summer, companies like Disney have transferred labor to firms who bring in temporary foreign workers, often having the laid-off American workers train their own replacements. 250 IT workers at Disney World in Orlando  were laid off and replaced with H1b workers earlier this year. Today we talk to civil rights attorney James Otto, who is suing Disney on behalf of the workers in Florida and hundreds more in California.