Labor Displacement: FAIR Launches TV, Radio, Internet Ads in Florida Highlighting How Companies Replace American Workers with Foreign Ones

(January 19, 2016 - Washington, D.C.) - Today the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) launched a nearly $1 million ad campaign in the state of Florida to help Americans spot and stop the systematic, ongoing and unfair labor displacement of American workers by employers using (and abusing) the nation’s immigration system. FAIR says employers do this to cut labor costs. American workers are the victims.

The ad campaign includes radio, television and significant on-line media components to engage Americans at all economic levels to a pattern and practice of labor displacement some claim is actually permitted under the immigration laws. FAIR is also advertising other ads on talk radio and in other states.

The ads tell a sad story of a practice happening all across America. It involves the recent hiring and firing practices of the Walt Disney Company, and relate individual stories as surrogates for these unscrupulous practices nationwide.

“This story must be told – Americans must be warned and take action. Walt Disney is one of many well-known examples of companies exploiting gaping holes in our nation’s immigration system to displace and undermine American workers. These practices occur routinely across the nation under a system that allows businesses to bring in foreign workers in preference to Americans and, as in the case of Disney, forcing laid-off American to train their foreign replacements,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “It’s like sharpening the guillotine at one’s own execution – and the withholding of severance unless the new worker is trained forces an unethical silence from the victims!

“There is a popular perception that companies can only use foreign guest workers when qualified American workers are not available. That perception is just false. Guest worker programs are riddled with loopholes written by business lobbyists that allow their clients to bring in foreign workers pretty much at will,” said Stein.

The most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)confirms the impact that mass immigration is taking on American workers. The headline for the December figures was that our economy created 292,000 new jobs. But beneath the headlines, the report reveals that 320,000 native-born workers lost their jobs, while 306,000 foreign-born workers gained employment.

“We’re told that the economy is improving, but for whom? More than half of all American households no longer fall into the income range that defines the middle class. Our immigration policies are not only helping to destroy the lives and aspirations of many of our citizens, they are destroying the social contract and social structure that has been the source of our strength and stability as a nation,” Stein concluded.

Watch the video here.