There’s trouble in the Magic Kingdom, and it all has to do with one of the least-talked about but arguably most important parts of our broken immigration system.
Last week, two former Walt Disney World employees filed a
federal lawsuit against that company's Florida theme park on behalf of themselves and hundreds of their colleagues.
The two workers, who were laid off in January of last year, say that Disney illegally manipulated something called the H1-B visa program to hire their replacements, most of whom were immigrants from India.
If true, these allegations are yet another example of a disturbing trend in corporate America, one that needs to be fixed if we want a sensible immigration system.
When used correctly, the H1- B visa program is a great tool for companies and small businesses alike.
I know from experience.
Back in the 80s and 90s, Louise and I owned an ad agency that put together internal and external newsletters for big companies like Sony and Holiday Inn.
It was called Newsletter Factory, and it was a pretty successful business.
But when we started expanding our operations, we needed some help.
One of our clients had subsidiaries in South America and Japan, and if we were going to do their job correctly, we needed to hire someone who read and spoke Japanese and Spanish, along with English, and who had a graphic arts background.
So we placed an ad in the Atlanta newspaper and lucked upon this great guy named Shinji.
Shinji was born in Japan but grew up in Peru, then came to the US for college and had just graduated with a degree in graphic design.
He was literally exactly what we were looking for, and not a single American who replied to the ad had the entire language and graphics skill set we needed to get and keep this new client.
The only problem was that Shinji wasn’t authorized to work in the U.S., so we had to get him an H1-B visa, a special type of visa that lets American business owners legally hire non-Americans - but ONLY if those non-Americans have a particular skillset that business owners can’t find in the U.S.
Shinji was perfect candidate for this kind of visa, and after a lot of paperwork and a lot of trips to what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, we finally got him the documentation he needed.
It wasn’t an easy process, and it shouldn’t have been.
While it’s important for business owners to have the freedom to hire the people they need to do a job, it’s also important to protect American jobs.
