The use of foreign contractors to fill short-term IT posts has always been fairly contentious. Complaints of rogue employers abusing work permit schemes have been legion, but now it seems such gripes could be justified.

A video posted on YouTube which purports to have been filmed at the Seventh Annual Immigration Law Update Seminar in Pittsburgh in May 2007 shows a panel of lawyers – identified as coming from US firm Cohen & Grigsby – explain to the audience ways to circumvent work permit rules, that will allow unscrupulous employers to hire cheap foreign labour.

The tricks suggested include placing job adverts without salary details in local newspapers to limit response numbers and inventing spurious objections to weed out genuine candidates at interview.

“Our goal here is to meet the [legal] requirements, number one, but also to do that as inexpensively as possible, keeping in mind our goal,” says the main speaker. “And our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested US worker.”

The video prompted Republican Senator Charles Grassley and Congressman Lamar Smith to write to the US labour secretary, demanding an investigation into what they saw as “the firm’s unethical procedures and advice to clients”.