Disney: Where Dreams Go to Die

Leo Perrero, one of the Walt Disney World employees displaced by the company’s massive influx of cheaper foreign workers, on Wednesday recalled his shock when corporate higher-ups explained that he had to train his immigrant successor.

Perrero, who appeared on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” said supervisors in October 2014 told him he had 90 days to train his replacement.

“If I didn’t train my foreign replacement, I wouldn’t get a bonus that I was offered,” he said.

Sara Blackwell, Perrero’s attorney, told Ingraham that the Disney case is not an isolated incident. She said she has received calls from employees of 15 to 20 companies, all forced to retrain foreign replacements brought in under the legal immigration program knows as H-1B.

The program is supposedly designed to give companies access to specialized skills that Americans do not possess, but has come under increasing fire as thousands of stories like Perrero’s emerge.

“It’s happening all over the country,” Blackwell said.

Perrero said the training process was broken down into three, 30-day periods. For the first month, a worker from Southeast Asia watched and recorded all of his movements as he performed his duties. Over the second 30 days, Perrero worked one-on-one with the replacement worker.

“The last 30 days were the most humiliating, which is where they pretty much took over everything I did,” he said. 

“The last 30 days were the most humiliating, which is where they pretty much took over everything I did,” he said. “However, they were much less-skilled and didn’t have the knowledge or experience that I did. I pretty much the last 30 days sat back and watched them completely take over my job.”

At that point, Perrero said, he had to turn in his company laptop and badge.

“I was out the door, and that was the end of my job at Disney,” he said.

Ingraham asked if the Disney executives express any kind of sympathy or remorse.

“The conversation was pretty much all corporate-speak,” Perrero said.

“The problem with that is there are qualified people doing the job, and they’re being fired,” Blackwell said.

Perrero said Congress needs to put a stop to the abuse.

“Our lawmakers need to take action,” he said.