HARTFORD, Conn. — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), flanked by laid off IT workers on Tuesday, spoke about the abuse of the H-1B visa system.

There are 5,669 workers in Connecticut employed under the H-1B program, Blumenthal said at a press conference. “How many of them have displaced American workers? We don’t know,” he said. “How many of them have been hired instead of American workers? We don’t know.

“But we know that increasingly,” the senator said, foreign workers are being used to displace Americans “because they can be employed more cheaply.”

Blumenthal’s press conference was another sign of the rising political visibility of the H-1B issue. The implications of this attention are unclear.

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