[Political Junkie Too]

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.

H-1B visas were supposed to be about jobs looking for workers, not workers looking for jobs.

The original purported need was during the dot com boom, when web-based programming was all the fad and businesses didn't want to wait for trained-up internal employees to meet the need. They demanded H-1B visa workers who could come here and immediately be productive.

That demand has since passed, and programming skills are commodity now. Employers no longer have the excuses of an immediate unfulfilled need.

This Department of Labor PowerPoint presentation The Employment of Non-Immigrants on H-1B Visas clearly says that H-1B visas are not to be used to displace American workers.

The language is clear that a company has to make a good-faith effort to find similarly qualified American workers. In Disney's case, the qualified American workers were already on the job.

-PJ

[DoodleDawg]

In Disney's case, the qualified American workers were already on the job.

Disney did not fire it's U.S. IT workers and replace them with H-1Bs. They outsourced their IT functions to an outside vendor and fired their IT workers. It was the outside vendor who hired the H-1Bs.