Bear11, the question of allowing professional or skilled jobs to be recruited abroad is a completely different one to allowing casual labourers to work on building sites or in restaurants.
I think both US and Irish Immigration agree on this - employers are restricted in obtaining work visas by having to show they cannot recruit locally for the position offerred.
How hard has FR tried to recruit pilots? Are they offerring market T&C's?
This has nothing to do with immigration policy, and everything to do with union busting.