Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), criticized Disney for using H-1B visas to replace American IT workers with cheaper, foreign labor last year during a campaign rally yesterday in Anaheim, Calif.
Walt Disney World laid off around 250 American workers last year after the workers were forced to train their replacements in order to receive their severance pay.
"Meanwhile the CEO of Disney made $46.5 million in total compensation last year. That is what we're talking about in a rigged economy,” Sen. Sanders told the crowd.
During a Senate Subcommittee hearing in March 2016 Leo Perrero, a former tech worker at Disney World, broke down when telling his emotional story of how it felt to sit there and train the person who is taking your job.
“I started to think what kind of American was I becoming? Was I going to become part of ruining our country by taking severance pay in exchange for training my foreign replacement? How many other American families would be affected by the same foreign worker that I trained?” Perrero told the subcommittee.
Read more on this story at Politico.com.
