I can tell you right now, as a recruiter, the hardest part about recruiting in IT for me right now isn’t the lack of US Citizens that can do the job, it’s finding them sorting through all the H1-B shops.
There are consulting companies that basically hold the H1-B’s for hundreds of foreign nationals and spam their resumes all over Monster and other jobs sites saying they’re authorized to work in the US, problem is they’re all on Visas, so you have to sort through those shops to find the qualified citizens.
And yes, they do cost considerably less, especially from a billing perspective since you know what you’re paying the shop isn’t nearly as much as the tech is making.
It’s really a disgusting situation, especially when you need a citizen for DoD companies, do a search for a .Net developer and you’ll get 1000’s of resumes, but you’re lucky if 100 are citizens.
I’ve called Monster on it and they prefer to ignore it.
I remember when employers used to stand in line at the collage entrance waiting to snatch up graduates. I went to a Technical school which had 100% employment after graduation. Those days are history.