Raymond Spencer, an Australian‐born entrepreneur based in Chicago, has a window on the future--and a gusto for investing after founding a high‐technology consulting company that sold for more than $1 billion in 2006. "I have investments in maybe 10 start‐ups, all of which fall within a broad umbrella of a 'green' theme," he said.
"And it's interesting, the vast majority are either led by immigrants or have key technical people who are immigrants."
It should come as no surprise that immigrants will help drive the green revolution. America's young scientists and engineers, especially the ones drawn to emerging industries like alternative energy, tend to speak with an accent.
The 2000 Census found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow. Nearly 70 percent of the men and women who entered the fields of science and engineering from 1995 to 2006 were immigrants.
Yet, the connection between immigration and the development and commercialization of alternative energy technology is rarely discussed. Policymakers envision millions of new jobs as the nation pursues renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, and builds a smart grid to tap it.
But Dan Arvizu, the leading expert on solar power and the director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy in Golden, Colorado, warns that much of the clean‐technology talent lies overseas, in nations that began pursuing alternative energy sources decades ago.
The 2000 Census found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow.
Expanding our own clean‐tech industry will require working closely with foreign nations and foreign‐born scientists, he said. Immigration restrictions are making collaboration difficult. His lab's efforts to work with a Chinese energy lab, for example, were stalled due to U.S. immigration barriers.
"We can't get researchers over here," Arvizu, the son of a once‐undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said in an interview in March 2009, his voice tinged with dismay. "It makes no sense to me. We need a much more enlightened approach."
Dr. Zhao Gang, the Vice Director of the Renewable Energy and New Energy International Cooperation Planning Office of the Ministry of Science and Technology in China, says that America needs that enlightenment fast. "The Chinese government continues to impress upon the Obama administration that immigration restrictions are creating major impediments to U.S.‐China collaboration on clean energy development," he said during a recent speech in Cleveland.
So what's the problem? Some of it can be attributed to national security restrictions that impede international collaboration on clean energy. But Arvizu places greater weight on immigration barriers, suggesting that national secrecy is less important in the fast‐paced world of green‐tech development. "We are innovating so fast here, what we do today is often outdated tomorrow.
Finding solutions to alternative energy is a complex, global problem that requires global teamwork," he said.
We need an immigration system that prioritizes the attraction and retention of scarce, high‐end talent needed to invent and commercialize alternative energy technology and other emerging technologies.
One idea we floated by Arvizu was a new immigrant "Energy Scientist Visa," providing fast‐track green cards for Ph.D.s with the most promising energy research, as reviewed by a panel of top U.S. scientists. Arvizu enthusiastically responded, "Wow, that's a brilliant idea."
As the recent submission of the Startup Visa Act bill suggests, there's really no shortage of good ideas of leveraging immigration to jumpstart the economy. The challenge is getting the American people to understand that high‐skill immigration creates jobs, that the current system is broken, and that action is required now.
We need an immigration system that prioritizes the attraction and retention of scarce, high‐end talent needed to invent and commercialize alternative energy technology and other emerging technologies.
For more on this, check out our new piece: "Why Immigrants Can Drive the Green Economy: Need for New Policy, Vision and Story Telling."
If you want to innovate and create jobs in the United States HIRE AMERICANS! Make it a requirement to manufacture in the U.S.
Here we go again with the great corporate lobbyists agenda to labor arbitrage Americans, age discriminate against Americans, refuse to support and invest in Americans, commit sex discrimination and domestic diversity race discrimination against Americans with advanced technical skills.
You're not going to get a patent from an American unless you hire that American and enable them to innovate. They are here, they have the skills, the advanced expertise, the drive and continually we get these sort of "opinion" pieces trying to imply all Americans suck and we must "import talent". Nothing could be further from the truth and the real agenda here is to export U.S. jobs.
What we really need to do is have an educational system that produces the scientists and engineers and thinkers we need. And getting a good education in this nation is harder all the time for it's citizens. They turned the student loans over to banks and they made a racket of the system. Grants and scholarships are harder to get and the costs of college are skyrocketing.
Our primary education system is almost a worldwide joke. We pay teachers almost nothing and cut bugets for schools first.
America needs to trim our bloated military, close the hundreds of bases all over the planet, and invest in this country. We need lots of things. some we will have to get help from other nations on. But we need education and we need self-sufficency. We have the resources, people and intelligence to be the country envisioned as an enlightened utopia. But first we need to stop being the world's policeman, "becon of hope", and corporate/international doormat.
Save money, cut the deficit, employ everyone, cut energy dependence:
Immediately order energy retrofits for all gov buildings.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
Where the authors logic goes way off base is that we as a country allow in LEGALLY over a million a year (more then the rest of the world - combined) of mostly low income, high birth rate and low education level people via our ridiculous family reunification laws. So we take in cousin IT before a Phd in genetics.
The other issue is that we take in FAR FAR too many bodies that can be reconciled if you are truly green. No matter the inovations and progress we each make the massive record immigration will wipe it out and we will continue to go backwards until we only allow a few thousand highly educated and productive people. If a few laborers are really needed (with 30+++ million unemployed I doubt it) then we can make them temp workers with their employers having financial responsibility for medical, etc rather then taxpayers.