Disney's Bob Iger to join Donald Trump's advisory group, despite Trump's previous criticisms against Disney for questionable foreign hires replacing American workers

The addition of Disney's Bob Iger to Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum makes for strange bed-fellows
A group of 16 top CEOs across the nation were selected to be part of an advisory committee to Donald Trump.

Displaced Disney tech workers came out for Donald Trump during his campaign,
so will Donald Trump follow through with his campaign promise to get their jobs
back as Trump did with Carrier?
The President's Strategic and Policy Forum was announced last Friday, with its first meeting scheduled for February at the White House.

The forum is expected to regularly and frequently advise and make recommendations to the President-elect on matters of how federal policies impact Wall Street businesses.

The 16-member forum will be chaired by Stephen A. Schwartzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, and includes other prominent Wall Street CEOs and insiders such as GM's Mary Barrah, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Jack Welch, JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, and Wal-Mart store's Douglas McMillan.

"This form brings together CEOs and business leaders who know what it takes to create jobs and drive economic growth," said President-elect Trump in a press release.


The group will also include Bob Iger, chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company, who had previously been a political target for then Presidential candidate Donald Trump for Disney's decision to replace and "insource" jobs held by American high tech workers with cheaper foreign workers coming into the country on temporary work visas on U.S. soil.

Will Bob Iger give into pressure from President-elect Donald Trump to hire back
the 250 American IT workers Disney laid-off and replaced with foreigners back in
2015 during the Presidential advisory group's meeting set to take place in February?
Trump railed against Disney's previously move to replace 250 American IT workers with cheaper foreign H1-B foreign visa workers at Walt Disney World, Florida in 2015, which frankly was a PR train wreck for the Walt Disney Company.

Trump vowed as a campaign promise to end H1-B immigrant worker visa abuses allowing American companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign visa holders on American soil.

This point of contention over eliminating American jobs in favor of replacing them with cheaper imported foreign workers from foreign "insourcing" firms on U.S. soil will certainly make Iger's participation on the committee very awkward, if not intriguing to watch over the next few months to years, depending on how long Iger stays on the Presidential advisory board.


Iger currently serves as a co-chair of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a group that advocates for the expansion of importing foreign H-1B visa workers from overseas to replace American workers in America, making many highly-skilled American jobs for computer engineers and scientists on U.S. soil obsolete.


Other members of the pro H1-B Partnership for a New American Economy sitting on Trump's advisory forum include JPMorgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon and Jim McNerney, former chairman, president, and CEO of Boeing, who also want to continue exploiting foreign visa workers at the expense of leaving American high-tech workers out in the lurch inside America.

Disney's H1-B program: Corporate greed at the expense of American workers
One of the key and most controversial principles of the Partnership for New American Economy is to grow "opportunities for immigrants to enter the United States workforce—and for foreign students to stay in the United States to work—so that we can attract and keep the best, the brightest and the hardest working, who will strengthen our economy."

They want to do this while discarding highly-qualified Americans with the same skill sets in the American work force.

Last week, Donald Trump followed through on his campaign promise to pressure Carrier to stop moving it's American air conditioning factory from Indiana to Mexico, saving about 1000 American manufacturing jobs in the State of Indiana.


Trump is currently pressuring a second Indiana factory, Rexnord, to stop them from doing the same thing by exporting/outsourcing American jobs to Mexico and keeping with his campaign promises to save American jobs.


The question now is: Will Trump apply the same pressure on Disney's Iger to make good on another high-profile campaign promise to reinstate all the tech workers who had been laid off in 2015 to be replaced by foreign H1-B visa holders?

President-elect Donald Trump may hold a grudge against Disney CEO Bob Iger
for supporting and fundraising for the Hillary Clinton campaign for President in 2016
That question will most certainly come up, as it will be the 600 pound gorilla in the room when they meet face-to-face, again and again, during the forum's many meetings with the press watching closely.

Donald Trump's promise to end H1-B Visa abuses was one of the most highly visible campaign promises made by then candidate Donald Trump that helped him get the Republican nomination for President and ultimately elected him as President of the United States on an "America first" platform.

Thus, Trump will certainly be obliged to confront Iger about Disney's many dubious H1-B practices in displacing American tech workers from their jobs as Trump's political allegiances have always been with American workers who overwhelmingly helped elect him in his unlikely bid to win the Presidency last November.


Iger may ultimately find himself regretting accepting a position on Trump's advisory group because the conflicts don't end there regarding Trump's views on immigration and exploitation of cheaper (and often more illegal) foreign labor on American soil.


Disney had also previously been cited and fined by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1993 for hiring numerous illegal and undocumented immigrants at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, a business practice they seem to continue to exploit to this day with impugnity without the same governmental enforcement consequences as the political climate of 1993.

In October 2014, Disney IT worker Leo Perrero was told he was being laid off
and was going to be replaced by a foreign visa holder whom he was forced to
train to do his job before he was replaced at Walt Disney World
Disney has been able to do this because monitoring by the federal agency that replaced INS, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, has greatly loosened since that time under subsequent Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.

But under Donald Trump's campaign promises to "build the wall" and deport any illegal immigrants on U.S. soil, Disney's U.S. theme parks and resorts again face the threat of renewed ICE disciplinary actions for exploiting a large number of cheap undocumented workers at its domestic theme park and resort operations over hiring Americans first.

Iger was previously noted to have said that he would like to see corporate tax rates lowered with loopholes closed to his company's own benefit.


While he may have some sway with the newly elected President on that issue because Trump has already indicated favoring such positions to lower corporate income taxes, the issues of illegal immigration and "insourcing" American jobs to foreigners will certainly be thorn on the side of Disney's many business interests.


The one thing Trump will not forget is the various disloyalties and criticisms made among the various CEOs who are on the Presidential advisory panel.


Bob Iger was a staunch, high-profile Hillary Clinton supporter in the 2016 Presidential election. Iger even went so far as to host a big Hollywood fundraiser for Clinton in August at a billionaire's gated home in Beverly Hills to help elect Trump's rival.


It thus appears to be that part of the motivation of bringing together the Presidential business advisory panel, from Donald Trump's point of view, may be to ambush many of the CEOs of corporate America on the panel to send them a message that if they displace American jobs from working Americans in any way, there will be consequences from the federal government.


Trump has a reputation of not forgetting nor forgiving what his political and business adversaries say or do to act against his business and political interests.


While stating his role on the advisory forum is "non-partisan," Bob Iger may find himself at odds with President-elect Trump on several populist issues and possibly in his cross-hairs of the President-to-be that will directly impact Disney's business interests.


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