Thread: More foreign workers? In fact, it's a good thing

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14778843.htm

Posted on Fri, Jun. 09, 2006

More foreign workers? In fact, it's a good thing

By Steve Jacob
Star-Telegram Austin Bureau

We need to expand immigration. Immediately.

Triple the current level, at least. Maybe lift the restrictions altogether.

Our economic future depends on it.

The U.S. Senate and President Bush clearly get it. The U.S. House doesn't, at least not yet.

Two weeks ago, the Senate approved its version of sweeping immigration reform that, among other measures, proposed raising the limit of H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers from 65,000 to 115,000. The Senate bill also exempts immigrants with certain advanced degrees from H1-B caps.

The House, obsessed with controlling the borders and the workplace, does not deal with this issue in its immigration bill, so the H1-B visa limits will have to be negotiated in conference committee.

Although most of the current debate centers on illegal immigration, legal immigration is badly in need of reform to be more responsive to economic conditions.

The current rhetoric is focused primarily on creating red tape, reprisals and barriers. What is being ignored is the crucial importance of streamlining the visa process for knowledge workers who supply the intellectual capital to help maintain America's competitiveness in the global economy.

A six-year H1-B visa is given to a non-U.S. citizen who holds at least a bachelor's degree in a specialized field and is sponsored by a U.S. company or organization that wants to hire the individual. The vast majority of these visa holders are high-tech workers, including engineers, mathematicians and scientists. We are importing workers largely because not enough U.S.-born college graduates earn math and science degrees.

During the 1990s dot-com boom, high-tech industry lobbyists persuaded Congress to triple the number of H1-B visas to around 200,000 a year. That expansion expired in 2003 while the economy remained in a trough.

Now the economy is recovering, and the 65,000-visa level is clearly inadequate. The quota for fiscal 2007 -- which begins in October -- was filled last week, four months early. The allotment of H-1B visas was used up before the fiscal year began in eight of the past 10 years.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates leveraged his rock-star status to make a personal pitch on Capitol Hill this spring to raise the visa limit.

In February, Bush said the U.S. needed more engineers, chemists and physicists and called for Congress to raise the visa limit. Bush said: "I think it's a mistake not to encourage more really bright folks who can fill the jobs that are having trouble being filled here in America -- to limit their number .... Of course, we want every job that's ever generated in America filled by Americans, but that's not the reality today."

Consider these statistics from the National Science Foundation:

The U.S. will need an additional 1.25 million science and engineering graduates by 2012. The number of jobs requiring technical training is growing at five times the rate of other occupations.

High-tech's share of U.S. manufacturing has grown from 12 percent to 30 percent since 1990. Science and math are at the heart of the training for those jobs. But only one-third of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students are proficient in math and science, and less than 20 percent of 12th-graders are at that level.

In 2000, 51 percent of engineers with doctorates in this country were foreign-born, as were 45 percent of life scientists, physical scientists, and mathematical and computer scientists with Ph.Ds. (Some U.S. employers joke that green cards should be stapled to every advanced U.S. technical-degree diploma earned by an international student.)

Highly skilled immigrants helped fuel the dot-com bubble in California's Silicon Valley. According to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, they composed one-third of the scientific and engineering work force, and Indian or Chinese CEOs ran one-fourth of the region's high-tech firms. Google, Intel and eBay all had foreign-born founders or co-founders.

The last major legal immigration overhaul predated the digital economy and did not envision the fact that industry-specific labor shortages could be addressed with internationally recruited employees.

The visa limits have predictable results. U.S. companies are opening offices overseas to have unfettered access to international brainpower. Their salaries, research breakthroughs and entrepreneurial spirit reside elsewhere, and the U.S. economy becomes a little less competitive.

Ironically, many politicians who complain loudly about the outsourcing of jobs overseas are also immigration-limit advocates.

Market forces -- represented by U.S.-company sponsorships -- should dictate the number of H1-B visas rather than arbitrarily legislated limits.


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Steve Jacob is publisher of the Star-Telegram/Northeast. sjacob@star-telegram.com 817-685-3955

Bush said: "I think it's a mistake not to encourage more really bright folks who can fill the jobs that are having trouble being filled here in America -- to limit their number .... Of course, we want every job that's ever generated in America filled by Americans, but that's not the reality today."

Get a load! Talk about the pot calling the kettle... Yes it's just not the reality today that Americans are bright enough to fill those jobs. How about tomorrow when half our citizens Mexican imports, will we be smarter then? Mr Bush was elected by us, sworn to uphold our laws and serve us. What about that reality?

Although most of the current debate centers on illegal immigration, legal immigration is badly in need of reform to be more responsive to economic conditions.

First tihngs first: WE need to salvage a country that is being politically overthrown. CLOSE THE BORDER, FIND OUT WHO IS HERE, then make immigration reforms IF neccessary. Seems to me those folks in Washington write and pass a lot of wasted legislation because they never follow through and fund it.

The current rhetoric is focused primarily on creating red tape, reprisals and barriers. What is being ignored is the crucial importance of streamlining the visa process for knowledge workers who supply the intellectual capital to help maintain America's competitiveness in the global economy.

Fine as I said before, get the cart behind the horse not infront of it. The immigration reform legislation is premature. We need to figure out what is left of this nation before we can know our needs for Visa workers.

Our economic future depends on it.

OUR economic future depends upon getting control of a rogue government, reestablishing our constitution, SECURING our borders, restablish our sovereignty and rule of law by enforcing the laws on the books uniformly, stopping the drug flow in this country that undermines our youth, encouraging small business that employs AMERICANS, finding an alternative fuel source, getting the FED government out of our schools, improving the quality of teachers in the public school system, providing FREE college education to those gifted students who are CITZENS, AS OPPOSED TO PROVIDING IT TO THE WORLD!

I don't know about the rest of you but I think that list is assignments must by necessity come before H-1 Visa legislation reform.

Brian,

I'm glad you posted this because now I feel free to comment on it!

They will do anything to sell this immigration BS to us!!! Now the economy is going down the toilet unless we have half of Mexico's populastion living in the US!!!!

The U.S. will need an additional 1.25 million science and engineering graduates by 2012. The number of jobs requiring technical training is growing at five times the rate of other occupations.

My suggestion is they better get some programs going in high schools promoting these degrees ASAP! Why do they think we need to bring outsiders in?

Dixie