Acquiring Trans Global, in Hauppauge, N.Y., will let IT Staffing offer IT contract staff to engineering and aerospace companies, says Declan French, CEO of IT Staffing. Trans Global's customers include Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Rockwell International.

IT Staffing plans to buy five more U.S. technology staffing companies by the end of the summer, French says. These companies will provide contract staffing resources with expertise in networking, enterprise resource planning, electronic commerce, and software development.

IT Staffing represents 37,000 IT professionals, 85% of whom are in Canada. In addition to the acquisitions, the company expects to make about 7,000 IT workers from its Canadian resource pool available to U.S. customers, French says. "IT workers tend to be project-driven rather than geography- or money-driven," he says.

Canadian workers are allowed to work in the United States without H1-B visas, which IT professionals from other countries must have. The 115,000 H1-B visas allocated this year have already been issued.

The focus of the companies IT Staffing acquires will remain on their core competencies. "Some of these firms are narrowly focused," French says. "We'll keep them focused on what they're good at and broaden their scope in terms of offering their existing clients some services they can't provide."