‘We’re hiring IT workers!’ But Americans need not apply

For most Americans, a job posting is supposed to be simple: A company has work to do. It posts an opening. Qualified people apply. The best candidate gets hired.

But concealed within thousands of online recruiting posts, job ads and company marketing materials tied to today’s IT staffing industry is a very different hiring system, one that operates largely out of public view and uses coded language that most Americans would never recognize as exclusionary – of them.

An in-depth investigation into recruitment practices used by IT (information technology) companies operating under the ITServe Alliance umbrella reveals a system built on coded language, restricted access and immigration-based worker control that most Americans have not learned to recognize.

ITServe Alliance presents itself as an association of U.S.-based IT services businesses, whose member companies receive shared “benefits,” networking access, recruiting tools and business support. What is rarely explained to the public is how those benefits translate into uniform hiring practices across hundreds of firms.

The result is a national recruitment pattern that, although it looks open, is anything but. To the average American job seeker, a posting is supposed to focus on one simple question: Are you qualified to apply? But ITServe-affiliated recruiters routinely insert phrases that quietly focus on a different question entirely: Are you part of our labor pipeline?

Visa-targeted jobs: When immigration status replaces skill

High-skilled jobs are defined by expertise, not immigration status. If a role truly required exceptional and hard-to-find skills, employers would recruit the best candidate available, regardless of visa. Targeting people with visas proves the job is designed around who is cheapest, most controllable, or most dependent, not who is most qualified. When jobs are designed for specific visas, it is the visa, not the skill, that is the real requirement. That practice defeats the entire premise of America’s H-1B and employment-based visa system and confirms that it is being deployed with workforce replacement in mind, not high-skill prerequisite.

These phrases appear repeatedly across member-company materials:

• “Only H-1B”
• “H-1B/H1 preferred”
• “OPT/CPT candidates welcome”
• “H-4 EAD accepted”
• “Corp-to-Corp only”
• “Independent visa”
• “No W-2/W-2 Only”
• “GC EAD preferred”
• “Local and H-1B candidates only”

To most Americans this is just bureaucratic jargon, when in reality it is a filtering system. When recruiters specify “only H-1B,” they are not describing a technical job requirement, but rather, a worker dependency preference. When a job posting lists or prefers specific visas (H-1B, OPT, CPT, H-4 EAD, TN, etc.), it means the employer is recruiting from a visa pool, not from the general labor market. The visa status literally becomes a qualification.

H-1B workers are legally tied to their employer. Changing jobs can jeopardize their immigration status. That dependency gives staffing firms significant leverage over:

• Wages
• Hours
• Relocation
• Contract duration
• Willingness to accept unfavorable terms

Visa-targeted jobs are built for labor control. Workers on certain visas are easier to pressure and less likely to negotiate pay or working conditions than Americans. It is all about leverage, not talent.

Employment-based visas are supposed to be used only after employers cannot find qualified U.S. workers. Visa-targeted recruiting flips this logic entirely: The employer starts with foreign visa holders and works backward, sidelining Americans before the process even begins. One cannot honestly claim a job requires rare, high-level skills while simultaneously restricting recruitment to a narrow visa category. Skills do not have an immigration status. Targeting visas exposes the job as part of a labor pipeline, not a genuine skills shortage.

Recruiting CPT, OPT and STEM OPT: Turning student visas into labor pipelines

CPT, OPT and STEM OPT visas are supposed to give students limited, temporary work experience related to their studies. In practice, employers and staffing firms actively target these visas because they offer a pre-filtered workforce that is cheaper, more controllable and easier to manage than U.S. workers.

These programs allow employers to hire without the normal obligations that apply to U.S. workers. OPT and CPT workers often come with:

• No prevailing wage enforcement
• Fewer payroll taxes
• Limited ability to negotiate
• A strong incentive to accept poor conditions to preserve future visa chances

This makes them economically attractive, regardless of skill level.

Recruiters advertising “OPT,” “STEM OPT” or “CPT preferred” are signaling that the role is designed for workers who:

• Are new to the labor market
• Have limited bargaining power
• Are willing to accept lower pay
• Can be trained, marketed and moved quickly.

When employers recruit directly from OPT and CPT pipelines, the job is effectively pre-filled before it ever reaches the open labor market. U.S. workers may see postings, but the real recruiting has already taken place through universities, recruiters or visa networks, shutting Americans out before they can compete. These foreign workers are often fed into internal training and “placement” programs tied to future visa sponsorship.

The STEM OPT extension allows employers to keep the same workers for years without reopening the job to U.S. applicants. Instead of temporary training, it becomes a multi-year employment track that bypasses labor-market testing and reinforces visa dependency. By recruiting from these visa programs, employers create closed hiring pipelines that favor dependent foreign labor and systematically lock qualified American workers out of jobs that should be open and competitive.

What ‘C2C’ means in the H-1B labor-broker model

C2C, or corp-to-corp, occurs when an H-1B worker is not hired directly by the company using their labor, but instead is routed through one or more intermediary companies that contract with each other. The worker is effectively leased, not employed, for a specific internal role. Truly high-skilled workers are hired directly because their expertise is essential. If workers must be passed through layers of vendors, it signals they are not uniquely needed for their skills, but useful as flexible labor that can be moved, swapped or replaced.

“Corp-to-Corp/C2C” sounds like a neutral business arrangement. In practice, it allows ITServe-affiliated staffing firms to:

• Avoid direct employment obligations
• Shift legal and wage responsibility
• Chain subcontractors together
• Mask who actually controls the worker
• Reduce transparency for regulators and clients
• Suppress pay through competition between vendors

Under C2C, workers are priced, marked up and traded between companies. This is not how scarce experts are treated. Rather, it is how interchangeable labor is managed – valued for cost control and availability, not rare talent. One cannot claim a worker is so highly skilled that no American can fill the role, while also routing that worker through multiple middlemen as a temporary commodity. C2C proves the goal is labor flexibility and cost arbitrage at the expense of Americans, not filling critical skill gaps.

C2C defeats the purpose of the H-1B program. If particular workers were truly rare, indispensable experts, they would be hired directly. The widespread use of C2C demonstrates that the program is being used as a labor-broker system, not concerned with high-skill necessity. When a posting says “C2C only,” it usually means if an America is a direct U.S. job seeker, this role was never meant for him or her.

The bench system Americans never see

“Benching” is the process of keeping an H-1B worker idle between contracts while remaining tied to a staffing firm. The worker is not filling a specific job need, but is being held in reserve until a client role becomes available. H-1B visas are supposed to be granted for specific, immediate job needs that cannot be filled by U.S. workers. If companies can warehouse workers on the bench without active work, it proves there was no urgent or unmet skill shortage to begin with.

Highly skilled experts are hired to solve problems, not sit unused. Benching treats people as inventory, held, rotated and deployed when profitable, which is a staffing strategy, not a skills-based hiring necessity. Benching exists to control labor, not meet demand. By benching workers, labor brokers maintain a ready supply of visa-tied labor they can quickly place at client sites. This allows them to undercut wages, respond faster than domestic hiring and dominate contracts, none of which requires rare expertise.

Many ITServe member companies operate bench systems, internal pools of visa-dependent workers who are:

• Already hired
• Often unpaid or underpaid between assignments
• Continuously marketed to clients
• Rotated through contracts

A system that allows benching cannot honestly claim it is addressing shortages. If workers are truly indispensable, there is no reason for them to be idle. Benching exposes that H-1B is being used as a labor-supply mechanism, not a targeted skills exception. Benching defeats the entire premise of the H-1B program. One cannot argue that workers are urgently needed while simultaneously keeping them unused.

‘Training and placement’ is not what it sounds like

In the labor-broker model, “training and placement” is not about developing talent. It functions as a pre-hiring filter designed to prepare visa workers to be slotted directly into jobs. The purpose of the training is to feed a placement pipeline, not to build genuine expertise. These programs allow employers and brokers to assemble a ready-made workforce without competing in the open labor market. Instead of recruiting Americans and evaluating skills on merit, companies pre-train visa workers to mirror job descriptions and client demands, reducing cost, time and accountability.

Jobs tied to training pipelines are effectively closed job positions. The worker is chosen before the job is posted and the posting itself becomes merely a required formality. Americans may apply, but the outcome is predetermined because the foreign worker has already been trained, packaged and reserved for placement. Rather than hiring someone who already possesses rare or specialized skills, these programs manufacture qualifications after the fact, allowing employers to claim specialized needs while bypassing qualified U.S. workers who are not part of the foreign-labor pipeline.

Across ITServe-linked companies, job ads frequently promote:

• Free training
• Fast placement
• Guaranteed marketing
• Resume support

These offerings reveal the true function of the system. Training is not provided to expand opportunity or address skill gaps; it is offered to standardize labor for resale. The H-1B program is legally justified on the premise that employers need already-skilled workers because Americans supposedly cannot fill these roles. If that were true, there would be no need for mass training pipelines. Truly high-skilled workers do not require post-recruitment training to become usable.

In reality, these companies recruit workers first and train them afterward to fit job descriptions. That approach flips the purpose of the H-1B program on its head. Instead of filling genuine skill shortages, the system is used to manufacture workers to meet demand. Success is measured not by long-term performance or expertise, but by how quickly a worker can be placed at a client site. Jobs become transactions and workers become inventory, a model that prioritizes speed and control over merit.

These training programs exist precisely because the workers are not job-ready at the time they are recruited. The “training” bridges that gap so they can be deployed to U.S. client sites and billed as experienced consultants. If workers truly possessed rare, high-level skills, there would be no need for large-scale bench training, resume tailoring or placement guarantees. The existence of these programs is itself evidence that the “high-skilled shortage” narrative is false.

In simple terms, employers cannot credibly claim workers are uniquely skilled and urgently needed while simultaneously operating factories to make them usable. The training-and-placement model exposes the H-1B labor-broker system for what it is: a labor-supply pipeline, not a talent-shortage solution.

‘Local candidates only’ doesn’t mean local

To most Americans, “local” means someone who lives nearby or is able to commute to the job location. In the labor-arbitrage model used across the IT staffing industry, “local” has a completely different meaning. In this system, “local” frequently means already inside a staffing firm’s deployable footprint, a worker the firm can place at a specific client site quickly because the worker’s work authorization, paperwork and logistics already align with that location. The word is less about geography and more about compliance convenience and placement speed.

A “local” candidate, in this model, is often someone who is already “anchored” to the metro area through the firm’s existing setup, and thus is:

• Already assigned to a client site in that region (or who recently ended a contract nearby)
• Already listed on prior paperwork for that metro area or within a pre-approved set of worksites
• Able to be redeployed with minimal delay because the firm already has vendor access, onboarding approvals and client relationships in that location
• Available immediately, which usually means already on the firm’s bench, already in the U.S., already in the firm’s internal system and already available for quick submission

In other words, “local” often translates to: “We need someone we can place fast without friction.”

That’s why “local only” can function like a gate that shuts Americans out. It narrows the applicant pool to whoever is already “deployable” inside the labor-broker ecosystem. It reduces open competition, limits the number of independent applicants who can apply and gives the staffing firm a controlled channel where it can rapidly cycle workers through contracts.

It also helps preserve the appearance of normal hiring. A “local only” posting looks reasonable on the surface. But in this model, it can be used to justify excluding broad pools of applicants while prioritizing candidates who are already pre-positioned and submission-ready through the firm’s existing labor network. In simple terms: “Local” becomes a code word for “pre-cleared for rapid deployment,” not “best qualified person who lives nearby.” An American worker five miles away can be less “local” to this system than a visa-dependent worker who is already inside the firm’s placement pipeline and can be redeployed immediately.

How the labor-arbitrage ecosystem locks Americans out of jobs

One of the most important takeaways from this investigation is that many of these roles are never meaningfully offered to Americans in the first place. Americans are not being locked out of jobs because they lack skills. They are being locked out because modern IT staffing has evolved into a closed labor-broker ecosystem that prioritizes speed, control and compliance convenience over open competition. Each component of the system reinforces the others, creating a pipeline that quietly excludes U.S. workers before hiring decisions are ever made.

In a normal labor market, employers post jobs, review applicants and hire the best candidate. In the labor-arbitrage ecosystem, the process runs in reverse. Workers are recruited first, often through visa pipelines, universities, recruiters or offshore partners, and jobs are matched to those workers afterward. By the time a role appears publicly, the candidate has often already been identified. This flips hiring from competition to allocation.

Because workers are recruited before jobs exist, firms rely on training pipelines to shape workers to fit anticipated demand. These programs teach tools, buzzwords and interview scripts, not deep expertise. When work slows, workers are placed “on the bench” – held idle until the next placement opportunity arises. This turns labor into inventory, allowing firms to deploy workers quickly when a client asks, without reopening jobs to the broader market.

Labor-arbitrage firms compete on how fast they can deliver someone to a client site. Speed beats merit. Foreign workers who are already in the firm’s system, already in the U.S., already cleared for a location and already trained for generic roles win, regardless of whether better-qualified Americans exist.

Impact on the U.S. labor market

The labor-arbitrage ecosystem does not simply change who gets hired. Over time, it reshapes the U.S. economy, weakens domestic talent development and introduces long-term national security risks. The effects compound across the labor market, innovation systems and critical infrastructure.

By design, labor-arbitrage models reduce open competition. Jobs are pre-filled, restricted or routed through closed pipelines that favor visa-dependent labor over independent American workers. This suppresses wages, limits mobility and distorts hiring signals across entire industries. The market also loses transparency. Job postings no longer reflect real demand, wages no longer reflect true scarcity and hiring outcomes no longer reward skill or experience. What remains is a system optimized for cost control rather than productivity, excellence and fairness.

As Americans are excluded from roles they are qualified to perform, many are pushed out of technical fields altogether. Experienced professionals leave the labor force or move into lower-skill or unrelated work, while younger Americans receive the message that advanced technical careers no longer offer stability or opportunity. Over time, this erodes the domestic talent base and creates a workforce increasingly dependent on external labor supply. It also changes expectations, teaching employers that hiring Americans is optional rather than the widely accepted and honored standard.

Impact on U.S. innovation and competitiveness

Innovation depends on continuity, institutional knowledge and long-term investment in people. Labor-arbitrage models break all three.

When workers are treated as interchangeable inventory, teams are constantly rotating. Knowledge is fragmented, ownership is diluted and innovation slows. Instead of building deep expertise, firms prioritize short-term delivery and client billing. Research, experimentation and long-horizon problem-solving become secondary to placement speed.

At the same time, excluding Americans from advanced roles undermines domestic innovation pipelines. Universities, apprenticeships and professional development programs lose relevance when American graduates are systematically bypassed. This weakens the U.S. ability to cultivate homegrown expertise in critical fields like software, AI, cybersecurity and engineering. Over time, the United States shifts from being a producer of innovation to a consumer of labor-assembled outputs, losing strategic advantage in industries it once led.

Impact on national security

Labor-arbitrage practices also introduce serious national security risks, particularly in sectors involving sensitive data, critical infrastructure and government contracting. Visa-dependent and subcontracted labor often operates across multiple layers of firms, jurisdictions and countries. This fragmentation reduces accountability, oversight and security vetting. Sensitive systems, intellectual property and data are handled by transient workforces with limited institutional ties and high turnover.

As domestic expertise is displaced, the U.S. becomes increasingly reliant on foreign labor pipelines for critical capabilities. That dependency creates strategic vulnerabilities, including exposure to foreign influence, data leakage and supply-chain disruption. In national security terms, a country that cannot reliably staff and secure its own technology workforce risks losing control over its infrastructure, defense systems and strategic industries.

The long-term risk

The cumulative impact is structural and profound. A labor market optimized for arbitrage rather than talent degrades skills, suppresses innovation and introduces systemic risk. Once domestic expertise is hollowed out, rebuilding it becomes far more difficult and costly. This is not a short-term labor issue. It is a long-term national capability issue.

Americans deserve to understand the labor-arbitrage ecosystem, how they function and why so many qualified workers feel locked out of their own labor market. Because once the code is cracked, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore. And then the question is no longer whether this system exists – but how long it will be allowed to continue.

See the ITServe evidence archive: To access a comprehensive and ever-expanding archive of additional evidence supporting this exclusive and ongoing WND investigation, visit “Foreign Influence and Lobbying Network Hub.”