Keep The Brains Out. What a Dumb Idea!

The human capital that America attracts is much more valuable than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.

But the idiots in Congress continue to squander our greatest natural resource -- our ability to attract the best and brightest from all over the world.

On April 1st, employers will begin filing applications for 65,000 H-1B visas for talented, high skilled, foreigners -- many of whom are graduating from U.S. universities with degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering.

Most hopeful foreigners can forget about getting one. These coveted visas will be snapped up within days, and hundreds of thousands of highly qualified individuals from other countries will be forced to take their skills, their drive, and their entrepreneurial spirit elsewhere.

60 years ago my mother came here on a boat from South America. She had won a Rockefeller Fellowship to Johns Hopkins Medical School and came to teach and do research at Cornell Medical School in New York City. If she had applied for the H-1B visa, under the current rules, she never would have gotten in.

As America falls deeper and deeper into depression, and the decline of the American Empire seems increasingly imminent, it is important to realize how we came to be the last best hope for world peace and democracy.

Our country was built on the backs of talented, ambitious immigrants. In a global economy, talent, ambition, and education are scarce. There is never enough to go around.

If we want our companies to remain cutting-edge and our business ventures to attract worldwide talent, we must break free of political rhetoric and refocus on the fundamentals.

If we don't let these people in, other countries will be glad to take them. Cities like Hong Kong, London, Toronto, Vancouver, Frankfurt, Mumbai, are chomping at the bit to lure these educated job creators.

For example, educated and brainy people from all over the world can easily get a Canadian Skilled Worker Visa, which allows them to become perfectly legal "permanent residents" in Canada -- no need for a sponsoring employer, or even a job.

Canada has no limit on the number of skilled immigrants who can move to the country.

"Visas are awarded based on education level, work experience, age and language abilities. If a prospective immigrant earns 67 points out of 100 total (holding a Ph.D. is worth 25 points, for instance), he or she can become a full-time, legal resident of Canada," according to a Fareed Zakaria's piece in Newsweek. Zakaria called US Immigration policy "brain-dead" .

Bill Gates is livid about the situation. In 2007 Microsoft -- frustrated by its inability to get H -1B visas for foreign high-tech Indian and Chinese programmers -- decided to park its overseas brains in Canada, a short two-hour drive from its Redmond, Wash. headquarters.

The software giant said it would stock its new Vancouver development center with "highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S." The US is losing thousands of jobs and Canada is gaining them.

It is dangerous and self-defeating for the United States to turn away individuals, with the skills that we need, who want to live and work in America -- under the illusion that by doing so we are protecting our economy. Ironically, the main opposition to granting more visas comes from the far right and the far left.

Our current restricted visa policy denies us a vital resource that we need to help pull ourselves out of the recession, create jobs and put our economy on a sound footing for the future.

Damming up the river of talented foreigners will cost American jobs, not save them.

Yesterday, NAFSA: The Association of International Educators called on Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Such reform should include the removal or adjustment of unrealistic caps on temporary and permanent employment-based visa categories.

If Congress chooses not to address immigration reform comprehensively, these measures must be enacted separately, the educators said.

The advantages of attracting these individuals to our country are well known: they are a key part of the pipeline of skilled talent from outside our borders that fuels our economy; they help our universities prepare the next generation of American college graduates for the jobs of tomorrow; Yet we cannot be successful in the competition for these students and scholars if they know that the only way they will be able to accept jobs after graduation--with employers who need them and want to hire them--is to win the H-1B lottery.

"People the world over -- people with big dreams and the entrepreneurial spirit ... -- want to come to the United States because they ... can realize their dreams here. So it has been since the first Pilgrims sailed--and so it must continue to be. Skilled immigrants fuel innovation in America.

Even if millions of skilled and talented immigrants want to come here, let them. Sadly, it may be, that all too soon, they'll want to go somewhere else...

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Comments

[joecollege]

Yes, abuses of the H-1 category can and do occur, and need to be stopped, especially those like the problem PartTimeRoadie describes. But employers pay large fees (both for filing and to attorneys) and face long, cumbersome delays to get H-1 employees approved, and they're required to pay (at minimum) salaries at least as high as the regional average for the particular job per figures determined by the USDOL (an agency not known for its friendliness to internationals). Who wants those headaches? The real problem is that U.S. schools aren't producing enough U.S. graduates with the degrees and skills needed to fill those positions. If situations like the one Thomas Jacob describes are really occurring, he needs to visit DOL in his area and ask why prevailing wage figures are so low.

[AngelaQuattrano]

What a joke. Visas are routinely used to bring cheaper labor from abroad to fill vacancies that could be filled by qualified Americans, to replace American workers who currently hold the jobs, and to depress wages. There is no shortage of qualified labor in this country.

[DebSailor]

I’m an international educator who works with the H-1B program, and I wanted to share additional information about the H-1B visa. Our university regularly petitions for this immigration status for foreign-born faculty and researchers in technical and other fields. Contrary to some of the views expressed in this blog, we cannot pay these workers anything less than the prevailing wage as determined by our state employment security office. We are required by federal regulation (from the Department of Labor) to pay H-1B workers as much as we are paying other workers doing the same job. Additionally, we cannot displace a current employee who is a US citizen; if there is an on-going lockout or strike, for example, we cannot file a petition for H-1B until the job action is resolved. If an employer is determined to have too high a percentage of employees in H-1B status (i.e., to be “H-1B dependent”), then the employer must provide additional attestations regarding not displacing US citizen workers. Finally, we must provide the same working conditions to the H-1B worker as we offer to all others whom we employ in a similar position. It is therefore not accurate to say that we in the universities bring “cheaper labor” from other countries to replace US citizen workers and depress wages. Federal regulations don’t allow it, and we don’t do it.

[research]

Sure, just require the employers to pay a 10% tax for foreign workers. That will pay for keeping track of them etc...

[PartTimeRoadie]

I like the idea, but don't think it goes anywhere near far enough.... They are saving way more than 10% per body...

The tax should be 100% of the difference between teh salary that they are paying the H-1B, and the salary that an American would expect to make for the same work. +10% state tax, which goes straight into the unemployment coffers, to pay for those American's that are losing out because of the position.

That would force them to pay market value for the workers (if not to the worker themselves), balancing the scales. Then they would still have to pay the 10%. This would ensure that ONLY the best and brightest are hired, and only in cases where they can't find local talent to fill the position.

[research]

Sure, the idea needs tweaking. You would have to use some objective measure of employee income worth. That can be nearly impossible in the creative jobs.

[TryToBeFlexible]

I am employeed in the software industry. Early in my career, the prospects looked really good for my income to increase to very comfortable levels, plus MIS degrees were becoming very desirable to college students. However, businesses could not tolerate actually paying American employees a good salary, and bribed congress to import a bunch of cheap software guys from 3rd world foreign countries. They were not needed. This has suppressed the development of such skills in this country, and hurt America and Americans. But, slightly increased profits. And these companies don't care about America, or Americans, they only care about their short term profits.
I can see the point of bringing in scientists like Albert Einstein, but we don't need to import foreigners in order to depress salaries of large numbers of Americans, in order to enrich a few.

[JimR]

April Fools?

[PartTimeRoadie]

Check the post timing. If this was meant as April Fools, he was more than 5 hours premature.

Besides, April Fool's Jokes are supposed to be funny on at least some level. Aside from the laughter I got at this gentleman's ignorance of the reality of the situation, I find no humor here at all.

[PartTimeRoadie]

You were 5.5 hours early for April fools buddy.

The problem now isn't that we aren't letting enough 'skilled' migrants in, it's that we have allowed too many marginally skilled migrants in to take the jobs of qualified americans.

I'm a highly qualified IT professional, with 12 years of industry experience, certifications, and time teaching others in the IT disciplines. Why is it that I'm going on 3 months unemployed? Give you a hint, when the company I was working for did layoffs, they didn't get rid of any of their H1Bs.

It's the old monkeys with typewriters. They may be barely competent, but put enough of them in a room, and they'll eventually produce something useful. And since they live out of suitcases and work for pennies on the dollar, it's cost effective to keep them around.

No, we need to start reducing the number, and increasing the quality of those allowed to come work during this time of distress. We need to get Americans, who were born here, live here, and hope to die here, into those jobs. We have plenty of people ready and willing.

[Blake Fleetwood - Huffpost Blogger]

The H-1B visa program is not perfect and should be fixed. Currently foreigners are not allowed to change jobs under threat of deportation. This puts too much power in the hands of the emplyers. This should be changed.

Now foreigners have to leave after a six year stay. More of them should be given the opportunity to get green cards if they have worked productively all that time.

But I am clear on my main point. We should encourage the best and the brightest to come to this country. The visas should be more like the Canadian system. Let the educated come, even without a sponsoring employer.

[PartTimeRoadie]

"Currently foreigners are not allowed to change jobs under threat of deportation"

Except that many of those H-1Bs work for contracting firms, that can, and do, shuffle them between assignments like checkers. They don't actually "change" jobs, their paycheck continues to come from the same employer. That is the reality on the ground from the view of the soldier, to utilize a Bushism.

I agree with you in so far as, the truly exceptional, the truly brilliant ones should certainly be welcomed. If Einstein hadn't been allowed to come to America, who knows how WW2 would have ended up.

The problem isn't the exceptional, the problem is the 98% of them aren't being employed because they possess some special skill set, or are more qualified in their field than American's. The problem is, has been, and will for the foreseeable future continue to be, the fact that American firms prefer them to US natives, because they are cheap, not because they are smarter. Just like the reason that call-center work has been outsourced to India, not because they are better techs, but because it's cheaper to pay the phone bill (now moot thanks to VoIP) than hire American's to do the work.

[vbc]

Small clarification: While the system could be a little better, someone working on an H-1B visa can change jobs. He or she needs to find another employer. It happens quite a lot. Also, an H-1B can stay past 6 years if he or she has a green card application pending. They just need to file for an annual waiver with the immigration agency. Still, the wait for green cards because of the low quotas is usually more than 6 years, so the problem goes beyond H-1B and can also be seen in the green card area.

Your broader points are accurate. In fact, the case becomes even more clear if you look at college campuses. If a company looks to hire someone getting a graduate degree in a technology-related field, then it finds most, in some cases three-quarters of the students graduating are foreign nationals and would need H-1Bs to start working. Companies can adopt an "Americans-only" policy but it's not clear how refusing to consider hiring a large group of talented people would improve any company, organization, or, in this case, a country.

[USITProf]

I'm not sure where you are getting your information but you are obviously not working side by side with some of these "BRIGHTEST" individuals. I have been outsourced twice, and both times to individuals with less then a year experience. I have been witness to phone interviews with overseas individuals and when they arrive in the states to start it is not the same person (still had to hire the person). Also, the more talented individuals are doing the work for the less knowledgable ones and upper management wants all of this brushed under the rug. You must remember the old adage, "You Get What You Pay For"! Also, the more jobs that leave America, that is less money in the local environment and less into our (ever dwindling) Social Security.

[TomTheAlmostUgly]

How about we give jobs to "the best and the brightest" who were born in our own country, hm?

[vinny]

i'm thinking that there enough smart Americans to do the job...

[Thomas Jacob]

I live in Bay area and from what I've seen, H1-B employees are paid around 60K which is half of what an average citizen gets paid. H1-B are similar to Chinese goods in Walmart. At the end of the day, top management benefits through huge bonuses by outsourcing while the other are asked to compete with people from third world countries.
Did we outsource Call centers across US because the Indians and Chinese speak better English?