A grim pattern has appeared in job fairs for laid-off technology workers over the past months, as a once tight job market collapsed with the dot com start-ups that powered it. Thousands of workers wait on huge lines just to get in the door, where they compete for a handful of jobs offered by a few federal defense contractors who all tell them the same thing---no citizenship, no security clearance, no dice. The rare few who get interviews are accepting massive pay cuts, happy to get any job they can in a market that is now heavily dominated by sellers.
See CARRIE JOHNSON, The Washington Post, January 20, 2002