THE H1-B SCAM: Lost Jobs: Importing foreign workers. [archive] A report out of Ohio:

An I-Team investigation found that 82 percent of the 33,348 preliminary applications for H-1B visas in Ohio last year were for jobs paying below-average wages. The most frequent applicants for these visas were companies that experts say specialize in outsourcing, raising questions about whether the program is filling jobs here or allowing more jobs to move overseas. . . .

The largest seeker of H-1Bs in Ohio is Cognizant Technology Solutions, which sought approval to hire 1,043 foreign workers in Warren County last year. Some of the workers may have ended up at Cengage Learning, which laid off 75 workers — most from its Mason facility — in January after the company outsourced part of its workforce to Cognizant.

Cengage officials confirmed in an interview reports [archive] that workers spent their final months training their foreign replacements. . . .

Hal Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, said Ohio’s numbers mirror national trends, where two-thirds of H-1B visas are for workers at the lower end of the scale.

“The IT industry plans to lay off more people than it will hire under the H-1B program,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like an industry that can’t find workers. The numbers just don’t add up.”