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Comment by dsinsky | Hacker News Reader

I'd be open to hearing your criticism of policies that allow Disney to have [American] workers train their foreign replacements that don't invoke any sort of xenophobia or racism.

The whole idea that it would be wrong or humiliating to have to train someone who had the gall to be born in a different (and generally poorer) country is based on the notion that Americans should be treated with more regard than people born elsewhere. If Disney had fired 200 Americans and replaced them with 200 other Americans, would there have been an uproar? Almost certainly not. Since they only difference is the new workers' nation of origin, how is this not a xenophobic or racist reaction?

Lots of issues are complex but complexity is not an excuse for xenophobia.

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> I'd be open to hearing your criticism of policies that allow Disney to have [American] workers train their foreign replacements that don't invoke any sort of xenophobia or racism.

If their replacements were white guys from Texas it would still be equally humiliating and offensive for people to be asked to train their lower-wage, less-skilled replacements as a condition for receiving severance. Come on. And unlike citizens, people on work visas have no real leverage to negotiate for higher wages (since their work visas are tied up with the company they work for or at least their ability to find a new sponsor), so the idea that they couldn't possibly suppress wages seems silly.

Is Disney going to pay the new 200 employees the same wages, and work them the same? Are the new employees going to ask for the same pay, and ask for the same treatment? Do they even have an empowered position to ask for that?

Maybe not, but even if not, why are you so sure that would be bad?

Let's say the foreign workers would have made the equivalent of $20k in their own country but will now make $60k for Disney in the U.S. vs. the American workers who made, say, $80k but will now end up settling for new jobs that only pay $60k (in addition to their unemployment, social security and subsidized health insurance and other social safety net features that the foreigners wouldn't have access to in their home countries). Are you really sure this is a bad thing for the world?

(By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)

> (By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)

Why do you think Disney would replace a ton of workers with inexperienced ones unless they're saving on wages?

yES dISNEY IS SAVING ON WAGES FOR SURE..Although I personally do not agree with using H1B to displace workers I also think American IT workers need to think about what kind of wages they expect for outdated and rapidly changing IT knowledge.. I have an excellent example in my own company.. A 48yr old American IT worker who makes close to 120-130K per annum... Let me tell you he does a good job but his work merely includes assembling PC's for employees, fixing bugs (rebooting Virus scan) and writing minor scripts once in a year to ensure email and server security. Majority of the time he just makes sure that all the employees machines are running smoothly. In terms of education he has an Associate degree in STEM and has been working for the company for 15 years.His position title says Systems Engineer. However a Systems Engineer in Google might actually be working on the Driver less car. Now the reality is that today the work that he has been doing can be taken care of by anyone even without a technical background.. so why pay him 120K? His knowledge was unique and fresh when he joined in 1998 but now in 2015 he is still in the same position , has the same qualifications and doing the same work everyday.. I am not blaming him..for this .. He is getting 120K for a skill set which is obsolete.. why would he think of trying something more or advancing his career..Since our company has a very small IT staff they might not take a step like Disney but otherwise this guy would have been long replaced. If I were him I would look towards more active roles within the company or else If I am so attracted to IT then I would go back to school update myself with the IT of Today and apply to a company that might need my new skills.. Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it

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