Not so Indians or Chinese, or Filipinos. Or Cubans or Iraqis come to that. You can get three or four of most of these for what you might have to pay an American. This is why tech firms are keen to ship workers into the States to get them to work for them, rather than some equally-qualified but expensive hamburger-muncher from down the road.

But immigration laws pertaining to the hiring of foreign workers in the States are tight. And firms have to prove that they can't find anyone in their back yard to do the jobs they need to fill, before casting their gaze abroad.

This is why U.S. firms hire consultants to publish classified job ads in local U.S. papers, with the goal of not finding any applicants.

At least that's what a report on the Information Clearing House" alleges.

Here, you'll find a nice little video in which immigration attorneys from a firm, Cohen & Grigsby, explain how they help employers post job ads that no-one will apply for, so that the firms can then use these in evidence when helping bring in workers from abroad.

"Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week," it claims. µ