[crz]

What you are saying is incorrect.
To hire a "H" visa person you must first go through several steps, at least in my experience. One is, that you must prove you cannot find the help in this field in the US before you hire a foriegn national to take the position.
The employer must apply to the Dept Of Labor in his/her state to get permission to hire a foriegn national. Then they make the employer go through several steps. First, after you provide the info on the foriegn nationals you intend to try and hire, you must advertise in several major papers and in the unemployment office of the state for a lenght of time. Then after that, the employer gets the permission to hire (if no person is available in the state)and then the foriegn national must go to the INS and get Passports to get the proper Visa's to be able to work.
If they did hire and laid off as you say it is illegal per INS rules and regs as well as I suspect it would be in your state. I suggest you investigate this as this sounds a bit fishy to me. In short I dont believe a word of this as my wife has taken a job that was to be offered to a person from Central America...and it happened in her place of employment. They wanted a CIS specialist and intended to hire from C.America. My wife has a degree in business admin with a specialty in CIS and found out and confronted them through the MESC and got the job...which pissed off the boss as they had to give her the job at her rate of pay to boot. Of course money talks and bullcrap walks if one knows the right congressperson which could be the key to this.
The other side of the coin. I tried to hire experienced sawyers who had training in several steps of timber falling. There is no such thing in the upper midwest. I could not hire as the MESC insisted that I hire and do on the job traing. I've advertised all over the north west to with not responce. I've advertised here and have decided to forget it. I'm sick of drunks and skunks that show up one day a week and such.

[blueriver]

I suggest you investigate this as this sounds a bit fishy to me.

All a company has to do is post a job ad in the local paper. It is that simple. I contracted for a company that put ads in the paper all the time for immigration purposes only. They just delete the resumes they receive. No one checks.

[dark_lord]

What I am saying is not incorrect - I limited my discussion to the IT field, which is my area of expertise. I understand about the steps one must go through to hire an H1-B visa person. A simple way around this is to first hire someone as a contractor. Let them build specific skills on a specific project, using specific technologies. Then advertise for someone with all of those skills. Say, for example, you want someone who can use: webMethods integration with MQSeries, to integrate an Oracle financial system to an SAA BPICs shop floor system, with custom Unix HR integration. How many people who answer the ad will have all of those skills? Answer - none except for that contractor.
As for the newspaper ads and the unemployment office - the corporate HR department has processes to handle this on a weekly basis. Also, I think advertising on your website, and job boards, can replace the newspaper ads. Typically the contractor is already working on an H1-B anyway - the trick is to hire existing H1-B's not new ones. But there are H1-B shops that specialize in handling the embassy's, the visa's, etc. - it is a big business for them. That is how they get the people into the country.

Sorry, but the high tech IT situation is quite different than your timber falling situation.