Author Archives: Denise Simon

Where Have all the Refugee Children Gone

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Government does not do anything well, that includes Europe as well as America. In Italy there is the mafia, in the United States there is the mafia…not in the historical sense but quite the same disgusting operational crimes.

Both nations lie, make terrifying decisions and people suffer.

10,000 refugee children are missing, says Europol

It’s another tragic aspect of the migrants’ crisis: at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have disappeared over the past two years after arriving in Europe, according to the EU’s criminal intelligence agency.

Many of these children are feared to have fallen into the hands of criminal groups.

In an interview with the Observer, the sister publication of the Guardian, Europol’s chief of staff, Brian Donald, said half of the missing children disappeared in Italy.

According to the agency, minors accounted for 27 percent of the refugees who arrived in Europe last year.

Europol warns that unaccompanied children are especially vulnerable to traffickers who exploit them for sex work and slavery.

Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says 

The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, failed to do proper background checks of adults who claimed the children, allowed sponsors to take custody of multiple unrelated children, and regularly placed children in homes without visiting the locations, according to a 56-page investigative report released Thursday.

And once the children left federally funded shelters, the report said, the agency permitted their adult sponsors to prevent caseworkers from providing them post-release services.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) initiated the six-month investigation after several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and forced to work at a local egg farm. The boys were among more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the United States since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.


“It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard,” Portman said in a written statement. “What makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.”

The report concluded that administration “policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agency’s care.”

HHS spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement that the agency would “review the committee’s findings carefully and continue to work to ensure the best care for the children we serve.”

The report was released ahead of a hearing Thursday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Portman co-chairs with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). It detailed nearly 30 cases where unaccompanied children had been trafficked after federal officials released them to sponsors or where there were “serious trafficking indicators.”
“HHS places children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about their alleged relationship with the child,” the report said.

For example, one Guatemalan boy planned to live with his uncle in Virginia. But when the uncle refused to take the boy, he ended up with another sponsor, who forced him to work nearly 12 hours a day to repay a $6,500 smuggling debt, which the sponsor later increased to $10,900, the report said.

A boy from El Salvador was released to his father even though he told a caseworker that his father had a history of beating him, including hitting him with an electrical cord. In September, the boy alerted authorities that his father was forcing him to work for little or no pay, the report said; a post-release service worker later found the boy was being kept in a basement and given little food.

The Senate investigation began in July after federal prosecutors indicted six people in connection with the Marion labor-trafficking scheme, which involved at least eight minors and two adults from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala.

One defendant, Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, 33, used associates to file false applications with the government agency tasked with caring for the children, and bring them to Ohio, where he kept them in squalid conditions in a trailer park and forced them to work 12-hour days, at least six days a week, for little pay. Castillo-Serrano has pleaded guilty to labor-trafficking charges and awaits sentencing in the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo.

The FBI raided the trailer park in December 2014, rescuing the boys, but the Senate investigation says federal officials could have discovered the scheme far sooner.

In August 2014, a child-welfare caseworker attempted to visit one of the children, who had been approved for post-release services because of reported mental-health problems, according to the report.

The caseworker went to the address listed for the child, but the person who answered the door said the child didn’t live there, the report added. When the caseworker finally found the child’s sponsor, the sponsor blocked the caseworker from talking to the child.
Instead of investigating further, the caseworker closed the child’s case file, the report said, citing “ORR policy which states that the Post Release Services are voluntary and sponsor refused services.”

That child was found months later, living 50 miles away from the sponsor’s home and working at the egg farm, according to the report. The child’s sponsor was later indicted.

***

EU officials find that most of the ‘refugees’ are not refugees. What a mess

Even EU officials are now finally admitting that a lot – or, rather, most – of the people we have been calling ‘refugees’ are not refugees. They are economic migrants with no more right to be called European citizens than anybody else in the world. Even Frans Timmermans, Vice President of the European Commission, made this point this week. In his accounting, at least 60pc of the people who are here are economic migrants who should not be here –  are from North African states such as Morocco and Tunisia. As he told Dutch television:-

“These are people that you can assume have no reason to apply for refugee status.”
Swedish officials are coming to a similar conclusion, saying that as many as 80,000 of the mainly young men who have gone to Sweden as ‘refugees’ in the past year alone are no such thing.

Now there are the usual attempts to crowd-please from certain politicians and officials who are talking about how they might have to deport these people. But they won’t, will they? Does anybody honestly believe that the Swedish authorities are currently preparing to deport 80,000 fake asylum seekers from their country?

Or let us assume that the 60pc figure is correct for Germany and that 60pc of the people who have arrived in Germany in the past year alone should not be there. Given that it has taken in more than a million people in the last twelve months, is Germany now going to deport as many as three quarters of a million fake asylum seekers from its territory? Of course not. They will not even attempt it. Everybody in Europe knows that. And everybody following events and weighing up their chances from outside Europe knows that.

Everybody on earth now knows that Europe’s present leaders lack either the will or the means to enforce their own laws. So more people will come next year, and the year after that and the year after that. All in the knowledge that once you’re in, you’re in. If the facts were otherwise then Sweden, Germany and other countries across the continent would currently be preparing to ship hundreds of thousands of people out of Europe and back to their countries of origin. But they’re not.

And so the numbers coming in will increase, and the politicians will keep posing, and the European peoples will rightly get more and more enraged at the fact that their continent is being taken away from them. Eventually perhaps even the constant bogeyman warnings about the ‘far-right’ will lose their capacity to scare. Not good times ahead, I’d say.

Still, at least we all listened to Benedict Cumberbatch.

 

CNN: Hillary, Republicans are not her Problem, the FBI is

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NYT Reporter: Clinton’s Problem is the FBI, Not Republicans

FreeBeacon: New York Times reporter Peter Baker rebuked Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric over the weekend about Republicans politicizing her private email scandal, suggesting on CNN Sunday that it was the FBI that should be really on Clinton’s mind.

The Obama administration announced Friday it could not release 22 of Clinton’s emails from her private server because they were top-secret, while Clinton maintained her line that those emails were not marked classified when they were sent or received, a statement columnist Ron Fournier remarked was “irrelevant.” The Washington Free Beacon reported Clinton signed a non-disclosure agreement laying out criminal penalties for any mishandling of classified information as secretary of state.

“I take classified information really seriously,” Clinton said on Saturday. “I just think that if the Republicans want to use this for political purposes, that’s their decision.”

King pointed out this was an Obama administration decision, and MSNBC legal correspondent Ari Melber noted on Friday that the administration has prosecuted people for mishandling classified material. Also, the Inspector General of the intelligence community is not a Republican appointee.

“Her problem at this point is not the Republicans,” Baker said. “Her problem is the FBI and the Obama Justice Department. What Democrats are quietly, absolutely petrified about is that come summer, you find an indictment of people around her, of her, a request for a special prosecutor, something that just basically turns this into a complete disaster for the Democrats in which it’s too late to change horses.”

***

Those who came before Hillary and her willful decisions on classified material and lying about it, in part from the WashingtonTimes:

JOHN DEUTCH

Deutch was CIA director from May 1995 until December 1996. He came under Justice Department investigation after his resignation when classified material was found on his home computer in Maryland.

An internal CIA investigation found that he stored and processed hundreds of files of highly classified material on unprotected home computers that he and family members also used to connect to the Internet, making the information potentially vulnerable to hackers.

A report by the Defense Department inspector general found that Deutch had failed to follow “the most basic security precautions” and faulted him for rejecting Pentagon requests that security systems be installed on his home computers.

Deutch apologized for his actions and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton before the Justice Department could file a misdemeanor plea deal for mishandling government secrets.

SANDY BERGER

Berger was the national security adviser during Bill Clinton’s second term. After leaving office, he found himself in trouble for destroying classified documents.

Berger, who died in December at age 70, pleaded guilty in 2005 to illegally sneaking classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing papers in his suit. He later destroyed some of them in his office and lied about it. The materials related to terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration.

He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, and though he avoided prison time, he lost access to classified material for three years.

A judge fined him $50,000, higher than the amount recommended by prosecutors.

Berger called his actions a lapse in judgment that came as he was preparing to testify before the Sept. 11 commission that examined the events leading up to the 2001 attacks.

“I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material,” he said at the time.

BRYAN NISHIMURA

Nishimura, a former Naval reservist in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 and a regional engineer for the U.S. military, was investigated for downloading and storing classified information on his personal electronic devices.

Prosecutors say he carried the materials with him off-base in Afghanistan and took classified Army records to his home in Folsom, California, after his deployment ended.

His lawyer, William Portanova, said Nishimura never intended to break the law but was a “pack rat” who thought nothing of warehousing Army records at home alongside personal belongings.

FBI agents who searched his home found classified military records, both in hard copy and digital form. Nishimura also admitted to investigators that he had destroyed some of the information.

Nishimura pleaded guilty in July to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. A judge fined him $7,500, and he was ordered to surrender his security clearance.

The violation was a technical and unintentional one, Portanova said, but one that the Justice Department nonetheless thought it needed to punish “to make its point.”

DAVID PETRAEUS

The best-known recent prosecution involves the former CIA director who pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor count of unlawful removal and retention of classified materials. He was spared prison as part of his plea and was given two years’ probation by a judge who faulted him for a “serious lapse in judgment.”

The retired four-star Army general admitted that he loaned his biographer, Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair, eight binders containing highly classified information regarding war strategy, intelligence capabilities and identities of covert officers. FBI agents seized the binders from an unlocked desk drawer at his home, instead of a secure facility that’s required for handling classified material.

One critical distinction is that while Clinton has repeatedly said she didn’t send or receive anything that was classified at the time – something the State Department now says it’s investigating – the Petraeus plea deal makes clear that he knew the information he provided was classified. He told Broadwell in a recording revealed by prosecutors that the binders had “code-word stuff in there.”

When questioned by the FBI, he denied having given Broadwell classified information, though he avoided being charged with making a false statement.

 

Saudi Arabia Arrests 9 Americans Connected to Terror

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Saudi police arrest 9 American ‘terror’ suspects: report

Riyadh (AFP) – Saudi authorities have arrested nine American citizens among 33 “terror” suspects rounded up over the past week, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported Sunday.

Four Americans were arrested last Monday and five others over the past four days, the paper reported, citing an unidentified source.

Washington, a strong ally of Riyadh, confirmed it was aware of the report but declined to elaborate.

A US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP: “We are aware of reports alleging that several US citizens were detained in Saudi Arabia.

“The Department of State takes its obligation to assist US citizens abroad seriously. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.”

The Saudi Gazette said the arrests also included 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakhstan national and a Palestinian.

It did not say if any of the “terror suspects” was linked to the Islamic State jihadist group, which has claimed several deadly attacks against security forces and Shiites in the kingdom since last year.

On Friday, a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in Eastern Province, killing four people before worshippers disarmed and tied up his accomplice who had fired on them.

IS, a radical Sunni group that considers Shiites heretics, did not claim that attack.

The Saudi Gazette said some 532 IS suspects accused of plotting attacks in the kingdom are being questioned ahead of their trial at the criminal court in Riyadh.

They are members of six cells arrested in “pre-emptive” raids across the kingdom and include a Saudi woman and a Filipina, the paper said.

Also on Sunday, the interior ministry said they were searching for nine suspects allegedly involved in an August suicide bombing that targeted a mosque inside a police headquarters, killing 15 people.

IS had claimed the attack in the southern city of Abha.

The ministry said in a statement that three other suspects, including a member of the kingdom’s special forces, had been arrested in connection with the Abha mosque bombing.

The oil-rich kingdom offered rewards of between one million riyals ($276,000) and seven million riyals ($1.87 million) for anyone who helps in the arrest of a suspect or thwarts an attack.

***

Meanwhile it is important to know and appreciate the work many are in fact doing by the U.S. intelligence community, they are quite aware of terrorists and their locations. It is gratifying that this work occurs with some success.

Four Lebanese arrested in Paris under US request: report

French authorities reportedly detained four Lebanese based on an arrest warrant issued by the United States, local daily As-Safir said Friday.

The newspaper identified the four men as Mohamad Noureddine, Mazen Al-Atat, Ali Zbib and Osama Fahs.

The report said that the French authorities did not inform Lebanese authorities of the arrest until Fahs’ relatives in Paris reported him missing to French police. This prompted the latter to contact the Lebanese embassy in the capital to inform it of the detention of four of its nationals.

The daily added that preliminary information disclosed that French authorities had no charges against any of the four men, but it briefed Lebanese authorities on a U.S. arrest warrant issued against them.

(Note the date and the date of the arrests from Treasury. ) 

Noureddine was targeted in sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department Thursday, along with another Lebanese Hamdi Zaher, for his alleged activity in money laundering at the behest of Hezbollah.

The department targeted Noureddine and Zaher for providing financial services to Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

Treasury claims Noureddine has laundered money through his company called Trade Point International S.A.R.L. He is accused of using his network across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to provide money laundering, bulk cash shipment, black market currency exchange and other financial services to clients, including members of Hezbollah.

The sanctions freeze any assets the two men have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit U.S. citizens from doing business with them.

The U.S. has sanctioned more than 100 individuals and entities associated with Hezbollah.

John Kerry Sent Classified Material via iPad to Hillary

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Quietly, this past Friday, January 29, the State Department did release some emails that you are invited to harvest. Here is that link.

Ever wonder where John Kerry has been with regard to Hillary’s emails? After all, he heads the State Department that is tasked with sorting, reviewing, classifying and posting Hillary’s emails? Ever wonder when and if they are going to search personal property including homes for printed material? In fairness, the intelligence community and the FBI assigned this expensive task of Hillary’s emails and server (the whole expense of which she should personally pay for) is quite concerned to determine all the compromised conditions by foreign espionage and intelligence operations. Further, another area for real concern, is the Clinton Global Foundation which appears to be in full violation of IRS ‘foundation’ law a matter that will require a separate huge investigation, that is IF the IRS well….heh would even cooperate legitimately.

Then there is Sidney Blumenthal and those emails.

State Dept. Records Show John Kerry Sent Hillary A ‘SECRET’ Email From His iPad

 Ross/DailyCaller: Emails released by the State Department on Friday show that in 2011, then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry sent then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton an email from his iPad that has been deemed to contain information classified as “Secret.”While previous releases of Clinton’s emails have shown that she and her staff communicated directly with Kerry when he was a senator, the new email is the first from Kerry that the State Department has determined contains sensitive information.

Kerry has largely been silent throughout the Clinton email controversy. He has sent letters asking the State Department’s inspector general to review the agency’s records keeping practices, but he has not publicly criticized Clinton for exclusively using a personal email account and a home-brew email server.

Perhaps now we know why.

In the heavily-redacted email, dated May 19, 2011, Kerry, who then chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears to be discussing negotiations between India and Pakistan. Besides Clinton, the email was sent to Tom Donilon, who then served as President Obama’s National Security Advisor.

kerryemail

Clinton forwarded the email to an aide, instructing her to “Pls print” the document.

The redactions in the email are listed under the Freedom of Information Act exemptions 1.4(b) and 1.4(d), which are categories reserved for information gleaned from foreign government sources.

The kicker is that Kerry sent Clinton the information from his iPad, a communications device that would have been much more vulnerable to hackers than an encrypted communications system.

According to the Republican National Committee, which flagged the Kerry email in an email to reporters, the batch of Clinton records released on Friday contained 11 emails that the State Department now says contain “Secret” information. That’s more than double the number of emails that contained similarly classified information released in all of the previous releases combined.

According to the RNC’s calculations, 243 emails released Friday were classified at some level, bringing the overall number of classified Clinton emails to 1,583. The State Department also announced Friday that it is withholding in full and into perpetuity 22 emails that contain “Top Secret” information — the highest classification category.

The State Department says it is uncertain whether the information in those emails was classified at the time they were originated. The Intelligence Community’s inspector general has said that two separate Clinton emails were contained information that was “Top Secret” when sent. That distinction is crucial because Clinton has maintained that none of the classified emails found on her server were classified when created.

As Clinton’s successor at the State Department, Kerry has overseen the release of the work-related emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over in Dec. 2014. But the Democrat and his agency have been criticized by many for appearing to side with Clinton in a battle with the intelligence community over the classification status of many of her emails.

During a press conference in Canada on Friday, Kerry declined to comment on the news that the State Department was acknowledging that 22 of Clinton’s emails contain “Top Secret” information.

“I can’t speak to the specifics of anything with respect to the technicalities, the contents … because that’s not our job,” he said, according to Reuters. “We don’t know about it, it’s in other hands.”

He was not asked about his sensitive communications with Clinton.

Another question Kerry hasn’t answered is why, since he knew that Clinton used a personal email account while at the State Department, he failed to demand that she turn her emails over to the State Department until autumn 2014 after agency lawyers uncovered Clinton’s email address while reviewing documents related to the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigation.

It is unclear if Kerry knew about Clinton’s use of a private server, though other high-ranking State Department officials likely did. Emails obtained by The Daily Caller earlier this month show that Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of management, was on an email chain in which Clinton’s server was being discussed.

***

It is quite likely that Barack Obama will apply ‘executive privilege’ to both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. It can be challenged in court as was the case for the Fast and Furious documents and Eric Holder. This month, however a judge did rule that those Fast and Furious documents must be turned over the Congress.

When it comes to the definition of ‘executive privilege’ here is a short summary:

 

So what is executive privilege?

The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government. The privilege is based on the separation of powers between the branches.

Executive privilege has been invoked since the U.S.’s early days but isn’t in the Constitution. It was only in 1974, when Richard Nixon tried to prevent the release of White House tapes during the Watergate investigation, that the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, and set some parameters for it. The Court ruled that no claim on executive privilege is absolute, and can also be overcome if evidence is needed in a criminal trial. (For a full legal history, see this report from the Congressional Research Service.)

So what does it usually cover?

Various administrations have set their own policies as to when they can invoke the privilege. (The Washington Post has a handy timeline showing when presidents have used it.)

Bill Clinton used them a lot, 14 times during his presidency. In 1998, his attempt to keep White House aides from testifying about the Monica Lewinsky scandal was struck down, the first time since Nixon that executive privilege was overruled in court. George W. Bush invoked the privilege six times, not always successfully.

Legal challenges have established two general categories of executive privilege: presidential communications and deliberative process.

The presidential communications privilege applies to communications involving the president or his staff that immediately pertain to the president’s decision-making process. The idea, according to Mark Rozell, a professor at George Mason University, and author of a book on executive privilege, is that “the president should have the right to candid advice without fear of public disclosure.”

Deliberative process involves a broader scope of executive branch activity: discussions involving White House staff or within other agencies on legal or policy decisions that don’t necessarily involve the president or his immediate advisers. Again, the argument is that government officials need to feel like they can talk honestly. The deliberative process privilege, Rozell says, is generally easier to challenge than a claim of presidential communications privilege.

Gag Order: Fired Employees vs. Foreign Workers

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Laid-off IT workers muzzled as H-1B debate heats up

ComputerWorld: IT workers are challenging the replacement of U.S. employees with foreign visa holders. Lawsuits are on the rise and workers are contacting lawmakers. Disney workers who lost their jobs on Jan. 30, 2015, are especially aggressive.

There’s a reason for this.

The Disney severance package offered to them did not include a non-disparagement clause, making it easier for laid-off workers to speak out. This is in contrast to the severance offered to Northeast Utility workers.

The utility, now known as Eversource Energy and based in Connecticut and Massachusetts, laid off approximately 200 IT employees in 2014 after contracting with two India-based offshore outsourcing firms. The employees contacted local media and lawmakers to pressure the utility to abandon its outsourcing plan.

Some of the utility’s IT employees had to train their foreign replacements. Failure to do so meant loss of severance. But an idea emerged to show workers’ disdain for what was happening: Small American flags were placed in cubicles and along the hallway in silent protest — flags that disappeared as the workers were terminated.

The utility employees left their jobs with a severance package that included this sentence: “Employee agrees that he/she shall make no statements to anyone, spoken or written, that would tend to disparage or discredit the Company or any of the Company’s officers, directors, employees, or agents.”

That clause has kept former Eversource employees from speaking out because of fears the utility will sue them if they say anything about their experience. The IT firms that Eversource uses, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, are major users of the H-1B visa.

But staying silent is difficult, especially after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored legislation in January 2015 that would hike the 65,000 H-1B base cap hike to as high as 195,000. The measure, known as the I-Squared Act, left some of the former utility IT employees incredulous. They were far from alone.

The 200,000-member engineering association, IEEE-USA, said the I-Squared bill would “help destroy” the IT workforce with a flood of lower paid foreign workers.

Eventually, Blumenthal’s staff did learn, confidentially, about the experiences of former Eversource IT workers.

In November, Blumenthal co-sponsored new H-1B legislation by longtime program critics, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), designed to prevent the replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B visa holders.

Nonetheless, Blumenthal remains a co-sponsor of the I-Squared Act, which raised questions among those laid off about his intentions.

“He is still co-sponsoring everything,” one former Connecticut utility worker said about Blumenthal. The worker asked not to be identified because of severance package limitations. “He is totally unbelievable.” Blumenthal was not immediately available for comment.

Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, “you would have a lot more people speaking out – real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out,” said Perrero.

“Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements,” he said.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to hear, last year, from IT employees who had been displaced by H-1B workers. It also wanted them to testify. It reached out nationally to affected employees, but had to settle for written testimony that was kept anonymous by the committee. The workers were too afraid to speak publicly.

In December, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is also the chairman of the Immigration subcommittee, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), introduced an H-1B reform bill that includes a prohibition against non-disparagement clauses.

The bill “would prevent employers who seek access to the (H-1B) program from requiring American employees to sign so-called non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.” The agreements can prevent “American employees from discussing potential misuse of the program publicly.”

Non-disparagement clauses are common in severance agreements. But the Disney severance did not have one, and had no prohibition against any claims or lawsuits, said Sara Blackwell, an attorney representing former Disney IT workers. It is unclear why the company went this route.

Fear of jeopardizing new employment also keeps many displaced IT workers quiet. But lawsuits alleging discrimination and racketeering are being filed on behalf of displaced IT workers.

Brian Buchanan, a former Southern California Edison IT worker, is another who trained his foreign replacements. He is now part of a lawsuit alleging discrimination by Tata Consultancy Services, one of the IT services firms used by Edison.  He is also included in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s decision to allow spouses of some H-1B workers to seek employment. That lawsuit argues that the added workers will hurt the job market for U.S. workers.

Buchanan, who has contacted lawmakers about the impact of the H-1B programs, sees “little progress” in the past year. “Americans are going to have to act and they are going to have to act in mass, because we are fighting a huge, unseen force,” said Buchanan.

Eversource was asked about the non-disparagement agreement, and had this response: “These are private arrangements between affected employees and our company that were made more than two years ago during a period of transition and change in support of our merger. We have successfully moved on to form a new organization focused on providing superior service and value to our customers.”

But many IT workers hurt by offshore outsourcing have not been able to move on.

Former employees at Disney, Edison and Eversource tell of financial strains, tapped retirement funds and an inability to find a job, or to find one that pays close to what they once made.

Workers will say, anecdotally, that they know of many former co-workers who are now struggling. The H-1B workers tend to be younger, and the displaced ones, older, they say.

“It’s hard to start over at 50 when no one wants you,” said one former Edison IT worker. That worker is still searching for a job.