H1-B visa programme vexes US employees after Walt Disney lays-off 250 people

Entertainment giant Walt Disney deepened the debate of immigration reform in the US after it replaced 250 of its employees with Indians holding H1-B visa.

Disney employees were told in October last year that they would be laid off and many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on H1-B visas brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India.

The move brewed resentment among the Disney employees.

"I just couldn't believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly," a New York Times report quoted a former Disney worker as saying.

"It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can't grasp it," said the American.

The H1-B visa programme used by outsourcing companies to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money as faced huge criticism.

There is a raging debate in the US Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

However, as the report, Disney executives said the layoffs were part of a reorganisation and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.

Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programmes and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas said that the programme created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans.

H-1B immigrants work for less than American tech workers, Hira said at a hearing in March of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because of weaknesses in wage regulations. The savings have been 25% to 49% recent cases, he told lawmakers.

"But Disney directly employs fewer than 10 H-1B workers, executives said, and has not been prominent in visa lobbying," the report quoted officials of the organisation as saying.

(image credits: reuters.tumblr.com)