
Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants - nhstanley
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-colluded-to-replace-us-workers-with-immigrants.html
======
davidw
The real fix to this is to make sure that people brought over with an H1-B can
_easily_ change jobs. That way they're not beholden to some low-wage job, and
companies that bring people in merely for low wages will face high rates of
churn.

~~~
diogenescynic
In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction.
Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the
highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued
skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the
immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

~~~
makecheck
As someone who went through the process, I can tell you that the mere
existence of a maximum annual number was insulting.

If I get a job, and my company NEEDS me, and I'm GOOD at what I'm doing, I
should get IN; period. There should be no crap involved. How the hell is it
good for a company to be told that it can't grow because it happened to
petition the 65,001st person out of 65,000 that year? How the hell is it good
for the prospective employee to have to try again later? And in extremely-
fast-moving industries such as tech, even the arbitrary time frame of "one
year" is an insanely long time.

The _only_ limit that _kind of_ makes sense is a thorough investigation of the
type of person you're bringing in (e.g. university degrees or other
background, some indication of what they're bringing to the country as a
whole). It may make sense to force companies to prove that no U.S. citizen can
do the job _but_ this system has been gamed for years, as companies produce
vague job descriptions just like they post vague patent descriptions.

~~~
diogenescynic
>Limits of any kind make no sense at all.

They are trying to protect US citizens from losing their jobs (or getting
wages cut) due to a sudden availability of cheap labor. A government is
rightfully concerned with making sure its own citizens are gainfully employed.
Citizens vote, foreigners don't. Every person within those borders who does
not have a job puts a drain on the rest of the country. Someone without a job
outside of those borders does not. So bringing someone across those borders
while an unemployed person is within them is a net economic negative.

Look at the biggest H-1B recipients:
[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)
It's all low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys and Cognizant.

These laws/protections are intended to prevent a race to the bottom. If the
public subsidizes the operation of a company through security, education, and
infrastructure, the community that makes that investment is entitled to ensure
that the fruits of that investment go to other members of the community.

~~~
makecheck
The thing is, "protection of US citizens" assumes a lot about what actually
happens to companies, and it assumes a lot about what the citizens themselves
are doing.

First, are you willing to pay $500 more for every product, and $10 more for
every meal? Companies have to compete, and they are responding to what is
necessary to survive. If a company employs 5,000 U.S. citizens and can't
compete, it may stumble and lay off 1,000 U.S. citizens, or fail entirely and
shed 5,000 U.S. jobs, all because it wasn't allowed to bring in a few
immigrants to grow a little.

Entire companies (and successful companies, like Google) have been started by
immigrants, creating potentially thousands of jobs for U.S. citizens. There is
no reason to _automatically_ fear immigrants; many of them are brilliant
people.

A lack of a paid job does not make you a "drain" on society, either! What
about children? What about volunteer work in communities? For that matter, I
have met some astoundingly lax and irresponsible people over the years that
_have_ paying jobs, to the point where I almost thought of them as a net
negative to the company.

~~~
diogenescynic
>First, are you willing to pay $500 more for every product, and $10 more for
every meal? Companies have to compete, and they are responding to what is
necessary to survive. If a company employs 5,000 U.S. citizens and can't
compete, it may stumble and lay off 1,000 U.S. citizens, or fail entirely and
shed 5,000 U.S. jobs, all because it wasn't allowed to bring in a few
immigrants to grow a little.

You're playing fast and loose with the facts. $500 for every product and $10
for every meal? That doesn't seem like an intellectually honest scenario.
Where is that based in reality? Skilled immigration and non-skilled
immigration are totally different. No one here is begrudging the immigrants
picking fruits and doing farm labor. The issue is when companies
lie/cheat/commit fraud to outsource jobs that Americans do want and are
qualified/willing to do, all for the sake of driving down wages.

Not to mention most of those 'products' are manufactured in China already so
there isn't going to be much price increasing there. Second, what a ridiculous
scenario where a company has to choose between hiring 'a few' immigrants to
save 'thousands' of US workers. Again, where are you drawing these examples
from? Clearly not reality.

You didn't acknowledge what I said and again shifted the goal posts to another
issue entirely. This is a pointless conversation if you can't even listen to
the other side.

~~~
davidw
Throwing up walls isn't going to protect people from the US. It's a facile and
ultimately unproductive response that plays to fear. The answer is to make US
workers competitive in a global marketplace. And it absolutely is possible to
compete on things other than price.

And while his numbers are invented, the concept is spot on: producing some
things is expensive in the US, perhaps too much so to be competitive.

------
geebee
While I'm glad to see the NYTimes covering this issue, I am disappointed with
the headline. The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the
country every year. These new free and full citizens pursue educations and
careers in response to their personal life interests and market signals. You
know, that whole pesky freedom thing that corporations often despise in their
workforce. Some enter high tech, some don't, and this article has absolutely
nothing to do with this kind of immigration, at all.

This is about high tech companies lobbying congress for a special temporary
guest worker visa (that allows for a dual intent to remain in the US), held
and controlled by a corporation, where the guest worker resides in the US at
the pleasure of the corporate "sponsor", on the grounds that there is such a
shortage of critical tech employees that we need to empower corporations to
bestow the right to live and work in the US on non-citizen who possess these
skills. Some of these corporations have then turned around and fired US
Citizens, some of whom are in fact immigrants, in order to replace them with
workers brought in on this program.

While there is plenty of debate here on HN on the extent to which the new
workers are "captive" in their jobs, I think we can all agree that the H1B
workers absolutely are not free and full citizens, free to choose their own
path in life, decide where they will live, what they will work on, what career
they will pursue, and so forth. Even if they can change jobs, they need to
find a new corporate sponsor who bestows the right to live in the US on them.

This kind of corporate power over individuals, on a massive scale, really
bothers me. You can object deeply this while celebrating immigration that
preserves the freedom and autonomy of the individual, and supporting general
immigration (or even a more general version of skilled immigration).

~~~
e40
_The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year.
These new free and full citizens pursue..._

They aren't citizens right away. Getting even a green card takes about 5
years. Citizenship another 5-10 years.

~~~
prostoalex
Depends on the program. Winners of green card lottery, for example, are pretty
much instant green card holders.

------
Fat_Rat
I'm not against immigration, but the most egregious offense here was having
the replacement workers trained by current employees as a stipulation of their
severance.

Here's the article that was posted here a little over half a year ago.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-
layoff-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-
disney-train-foreign-replacements.html)

It's nice to see some closure.

~~~
logfromblammo
The intent of the H1B is supposedly to provide foreign workers for labor
categories where no American national can be found to perform the work. If
there is any training going on there at all, that is proof of fraud. If the
ones doing the training are American nationals, that just makes it more
egregious.

Hadean justice would alter the H1B visa category such that the guest worker
could perform no function for the company other than to train American
nationals to perform adequately in the labor category that required the
imported foreign worker.

Clearly, if it is advantageous to import a skill, it would be more
advantageous to replicate it during the limited time that it is available.

~~~
tyre
> If there is any training going on there at all, that is proof of fraud.

This is not true.

Let's say you need someone with expertise in a very specific category, like
embedding javascript into Postgres. You find the one person in the world who
does that and hire them using an H1B. Your whole company uses Macs and she is
used to Windows.

Is training that new employee to provision an OS X machine fraud?

No.

~~~
logfromblammo
If it is a job requirement to use Mac OS, and the guest worker does not know
Mac OS, they are _not qualified for the job_. If they can meet the
requirements by being trained in Mac OS, a local could also meet the
requirements by being trained in javascript and Postgres.

Either the company is being deceptive by making the job requirements much
narrower than is reasonable, or in claiming that no local could meet them.

Realistically, there are probably at least 18000 people worldwide (top 0.1% of
software pros) who could hear that you want javascript embedded in Postgres,
and--without any training from you whatsoever--be able to do that two weeks
later, and at least 3500 of them are currently authorized to work in the US
for any employer. But the people you can get without a visa will want at least
$150k a year to do that for you, because they know they are elite software
professionals in the US, whereas the person you import may only expect $90k.

Please note that the requirements you mentioned as an example are _experience
based_ requirements, not _aptitude based_ requirement. Many of us on HN, given
a sufficient lead time, can meet any _aptitude based_ requirement that a
company might care to advertise. But none of us can have 5 years of experience
with a specific technology tool in less than 5 years.

The sort of requirements that might non-fraudulently require an H1B worker
would include fluency in a natural language other than English, or knowledge
of certain areas of computing, such as artificial vision, natural language
processing, distributed network architecture, custom hardware interfaces,
cryptography, and the like. When you need a cryptographer, you ask for someone
with a proven aptitude in cryptography, not someone with 5 years of experience
in AES, X.509, and "Bitcoin hacking". Structuring requirements that way is a
means to intentionally disqualify everyone but the pre-selected applicant. And
it is not limited to gaming the immigration system, either, but as a means to
discriminate against protected classes. Someone with 30 years of C experience
is undoubtedly an experienced software professional, but requiring five years
of experience in Node.js is a great way to weed out that applicant for being
_too old_ , rather than being _unable to do the job_.

------
crapolasplatter
Wait A second something doesn't make sense here.

I thought the main reason for H1-B visas was because there aren't enough
American workers?

So why would they get rid of American workers they already had ,that have been
doing the job?

Surely it couldn't be because they lower pay of the H1-B workers?

~~~
protomyth
Why yes,
[http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm](http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm)
states:

    
    
      The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers
      who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and
      abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the
      temporary employment of qualified individuals who are
      not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.
    

Sadly, the top H1-B visa sponsors are:
[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

You'll not that list is pretty heavy on the "body shop" side.

~~~
serge2k
top 10 are all consulting, wow.

------
godzillabrennus
I've watched this story unfold more and more as a friend was laid off by
Disney and not rehired. Money talks in these situations, without a public
backlash against Disney it'll be cheaper for them to keep doing this.

------
bloomingfractal
People, remember how many successful companies have been founded by immigrants
(Sergey Brin comes to mind). This is not a zero-sum game, if innovation
doesn't happen here in this country it will happen eventually elsewhere. The
US is actually very lucky of having hard-working qualified people wanting to
immigrate and contribute to the local economy.

Recall that crime rates in the US among immigrants are lower than in the
general population:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_States)

That being said, the H1-B system is broken and needs urgent reform, I suggest
looking at the point-system used in Canada.

------
jmspring
There used to be an implied contract between employee and company back in the
day -- the company would provide growth opportunities and training for an
employee, and the employee would stay with the company for years.

That hasn't been the case for many many years, but the memory lingers and some
employees feel beholden to companies. Many large public corporations these
days look for maximizing "share holder value", which translates into "what can
we do right now to maximize revenue". That being said, those short term
actions will have long term effects. Cringely has done well to document the
case of IBM. My graduate advisor was old school IBM and was still getting
money from a time when (i don't know the exact specifics) where if an employee
made a significant impact that saved the company money, they company would
provide some renumeration in kind. His patents, etc. still brought him money
from his time at IBM.

This is going to be a gross over simplification, but it is based on personal
experience at two companies -- both startups. There are certain nationalities,
maybe it is due to national ties, sometimes it seems due to prior business
relationships and potential kickbacks, where an individual in power puts
significant pressure on the company to hire a particular out sourcing firm or
sponsor an H1-B for a particular individual.

Just like the numerous debates around "women in tech", there are factors at
play and decisions made where hiring isn't always about "what's right for the
company", but more about a "cultural" or "ethnic" fit.

Skill and merit should be at the forefront (a pipe dream, but we like to think
it is there). Any work place where there is a significant dominance of one
culture over another (unless, say a whole team was brought in as a whole)
speaks to a diversity and cultural problem. Unfortunately, a lot of these can
also be coupled to Visas like the H1-B.

------
bruceb
they should not be raising the fee on transferring between employers: "and
another $4,000 to move an H-1B immigrant who is already in the country to a
new employer."

This is a give away to the outsourcing firms. Helping them having a bit more
control over their employee.

------
DINKDINK
Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types
of people is beneficial?

If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California
from hiring someone from New York?

Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

~~~
diogenescynic
>artificial barriers

Like citizenship? Do you consider citizenship an artificial barrier?

As someone who has worked at tech companies and various law firms in the
Silicon Valley, I've seen this story played out several times. Hire Cognizant,
TCS, Infosys, Symphony, or some other outsourcing firm and then bring in H-1Bs
for an entire department. All it does is drive down wages for everyone and
hurt everyone except for the 1% at the top.

How do you feel about companies and law firms gaming job postings to
disqualify qualified workers in the US so they can hire someone on a visa for
much less? Employers are posting jobs that don’t really exist, seeking
candidates they don’t want, and paying for bogus non-ads to show there’s an IT
labor shortage in America. Here is the law firm Cohen & Grigsby advising other
employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified
applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most
qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU)
Do you consider this abuse or fraudulent?

>Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

Implying that the only people against immigration are racists is just a lazy,
offensive, and dismissive argument. Try something else.

~~~
DINKDINK
>Do you consider citizenship an artificial barrier?

Actual barrier to a job: knowing how to deliver that type of service.

Artificial barrier: Something arbitrary synthesized by a party not involved in
an A<->B transaction. Such as, having your papers in order so someone doesn't
throw you in jail.

>All it does is drive down wages for everyone and hurt everyone except for the
1% at the top. Specious argument. What about the person from New York/India
moving to California?

Does allowing a company from California hire someone from New York 'drive down
wages hurt everyone except the top 1%"? If not why does it suddenly 'drive
down wages hurt everyone except the top 1%" when you change New York to India?
This is my motivation of suspicion that H1 visas are a guise of xenophobia.

To me, H1 visas appear to be a sophomoric tantrum of the US transitioning to a
global economy.

Addendum for your reflection: Doesn't buying foreign manufactured goods 'drive
down wages'? Do you not buy foreign mfg goods? Why not force all companies
selling goods in the US to have those products exclusively made in the USA?

~~~
techsupporter
> Does allowing a company from California hire someone from New York 'drive
> down wages hurt everyone except the top 1%"?

Fundamental difference: I, as a U.S. citizen, have the legal right to move to
California (or New York, or any of the other 48 states, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and so on) and work there. I do not have that
legal right in relation to India. Until we have achieved "free trade" for the
movement of people participating in an economy--like the European Union does
internally--I do not have any objection to my country of citizenship trying to
see that I am employed over non-citizens.

> To me, H1 visas appear to be a sophomoric tantrum of the US transitioning to
> a global economy.

Absolutely; I won't dispute that. On the other hand, why doesn't India have a
program for U.S. nationals to easily move to India and take up employment? Or
China? Or Brazil? It's easier to go to the United Kingdom for work than so-
called "developing markets."

> Doesn't buying foreign manufactured goods 'drive down wages'?

It can and sometimes does.

> Do you not buy foreign mfg goods?

Where possible, I do not. Most of my clothes are made in the United States as
is my television and my computer. My mobile phone was made in the U.S.
(Motorola-manufactured in Fort Worth, Texas) but now that's not an option
because Motorola shuttered that plant.

> Why not force all companies selling goods in the US to have those products
> exclusively made in the USA?

I realize this is a rhetorical question but I'll answer it straight anyway: I
wouldn't object but that does rather bring about more centralized planning of
the economy which is something to which a lot of people would object.

------
utternerd
If that replacement can serve the same purpose, and give approximately the
same value to the company, why should the native and/or higher-waged person
expect to have priority?

~~~
wfo
Because you can always truck in a slew of desperate people willing to work for
lower and lower wages until we descend into de facto slavery (not even being
hyperbolic, that's essentially what many sweatshops are in some countries,
look at hypercapitalist Dubai where companies retain control of 'employee's
passports and refuse to return them so employees cannot escape the
country/near-fatal working conditions).

We've compromised as a society and said sure slave labor will exist but not in
the US, if a company wants to benefit from the infrastructure and educated
workforce and culture and benefits that American society has developed they
have to be decent corporate citizens and treat workers with a modicum of
respect. You're suggesting bringing slave labor here, I'd suggest rather we
sprint in the opposite direction and ban it everywhere through e.g. making the
import of goods made through slave labor a criminal offense.

~~~
davidw
IT jobs are pretty easy to export, too, so if there's a big disparity, sooner
or later, the jobs can go the other direction, if the people can't come in
this (towards the US) direction.

~~~
DannoHung
It's easy to _say_ , "IT jobs are pretty easy to export".

In practice, this depends on a number of factors being aligned correctly and
an organization being tuned to the idea of remote work. Especially if the
deliverable of the IT job in question is part of the core function of the
organization.

~~~
DrScump
They are absolutely easy to export.

Exporting with _long-term net success_ (in savings or quality or both) is
what's difficult.

------
pharrington
The obvious next step after preventing corporations from replacing current
employees with low wage immigrant workers is to replace the employees with low
wage American workers. Visa laws seem orthagonal to the main problem here.

~~~
r00fus
So then we replace those with even lower wage immigrants and repeat the cycle?

------
markdown
Just as an FYI:

People all over the world also get the short end of the stick when expats are
favoured over locals. The third world is full of high-paying positions held by
white westerners doing jobs that locals can do.

------
is_it_worth_it_
This is the future of the technology industry. There is no fighting it, you
cannot fight with the forces of the free market. The salary differential
between US based tech workers and foreign workers is too high. If the products
you are working on require no innovation or real skill, as is likely with
these disney positions, they will be outsourced.

~~~
dustinchilson
They've done a ton of innovation.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-
magicband/](http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/)

~~~
dangerboysteve
how is RFID use innovative?

~~~
darkarmani
It's hard to see if you don't actually read the article.

