An attorney for Disney IT workers who recently were fired and forced to train their foreign national replacements has called out Florida Senator Marco Rubio for his unabashed support for the H1-B visa program that allows such corporate shenanigans.
The American workers are filing a lawsuit against Disney for failing to follow the provisions of the H1-B visa law.
Sara Blackwell is representing the workers and gave some details about the impending legal action.
“I think Sen. Rubio is a liar,” Blackwell said:
When you tell America that there are not enough qualified American workers— whether you are Mark Zuckerberg, or [Disney CEO] Bob Iger, or Marco Rubio— when you say that there aren’t enough qualified Americans while hundreds of qualified Americans are being fired, and replaced by less qualified foreigners, that’s a straight lie. And I think Rubio lies. And the only motivation I can imagine he has to do so is the support he gets from his corporate donors.
Blackwell tells Breitbart that the Disney employees are filing complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is a prerequisite to bringing forth a discrimination lawsuit. Blackwell explained that by terminating the Americans and forcing them to train their foreign replacements, the employees will make discrimination claims under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The claims include discrimination based on national origin (the displaced workers were American/non-Indian, while their replacements were reportedly Indian nationals); race (most of the employees terminated were non-Indian, while their replacements were reportedly Indian nationals); age (most of the displaced workers were over the age of forty while most of the foreign replacements were under forty); and gender (some of the employees who were terminated were women while nearly all of the foreign worker replacements were men).
Blackwell noted there is an extreme amount of political pressure placed on politicians when it comes to the H1-B visa program. Large companies are spending billions to promote cheaper and less qualified foreign workers:
Indeed, groups promoting policies that would replace American workers frequently use the term “new America” as a euphemism. For instance, the Murdoch-Iger lobbying firm is called the “Partnership for A New American Economy;” the National Journal has launched “The Next America” project; and the White House’s immigration initiative is called the “New Americans Project.” Similarly, Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign theme is, “A New American Century.”
Rubio’s newest H-1B expansion bill is titled the Immigration Innovation Act, or I-Squared. Some of Rubio’s top financial boosters are big users of H-1B program.
For instance, Oracle is ranked 20th among the biggest users of the H-1B program, according to USCIS data analyzed by Computer World’s Patrick Thibodeau. Oracle has endorsed Rubio’s legislation and now its billionaire co-founder, Larry Ellison, is helping to fund Rubio’s campaign.
In July, the WSJ reported that Ellison gave $3 million to the pro-Rubio Super PAC. In June, Ellison hosted a $2,700 per-person fundraiser for Rubio. In addition, the bill has also received the endorsement Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration expansion group, FWD.us. Most strikingly, the bill has been endorsed by the lobbying firm co-chaired by none other than Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, along with FOX’s Rupert Murdoch.
Marco Rubio has come in for the lion’s share of criticism for supporting foreign workers over Americans both because of Disney’s location in his home state and his vocal support for H1-B visa expansion. Rubio made the following claim in a recent debate:
Rubio suggested that Americans would need further training before they would be qualified to fill certain jobs in their own country: “We need to get back to training people in this country to do the jobs of the 21st century… The best way to close this gap is to modernize higher education so Americans have the skills for those jobs,” Rubio said. The “ideal scenario is to train Americans to do the work, so we don’t have to rely on people from abroad,” Rubio declared.
This response prompted swift rebuke from labor expert and Howard University professor Ron Hira. “It’s ironic that Rubio would basically blame American workers for not being skilled and trained [even though] American workers in his own state, who have the skills and were doing their job, were replaced by H-1B workers, who had less skills.”
When Rubio attempted to claim that he had sought “reforms” to the program to prevent abuses, Hira—like Blackwell— declared Rubio’s claim to be “an outright fabrication.”
Rubio’s I-Squared bill would triple H-1B visas while also essentially lifting green card caps for the foreign STEM workforce and their relatives.
In testimony submitted for the record in reply to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, H-1B expert and attorney John Miano was asked directly: “what protections exist for American workers in” Marco Rubio I-Squared bill? His blunt answer: “There are none.”
It’s clear than for Marco Rubio, when it comes to American IT workers money talks and they can walk.
